


a great language

by heartunsettledsoul



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: aka 101 dalmations au i guess???, aka the au that i never knew i needed, and their owners are about to be as well, bughead - Freeform, caramel and hot dog are in love, our pets are soulmates au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-30 19:03:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: He pauses after writing the opener of the note. If you have to caveat that something is going to sound ridiculous, you probably shouldn’t be saying it at all. And it is fucking ridiculous that Jughead is about to write a letter to his neighbor—practically a perfect fucking stranger—because his goddamn dog is lovesick for said neighbor’s cat.Completely, utterly ridiculous.or, Jughead's dog has made friends with the girl next door's cat.(based onthis delightful poston tumblr)





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

> __An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language. ― Martin Buber_ _

 

 _This is probably going to sound ridiculous,_ Jughead writes on the only piece of plain paper he can find—the back of a letter from his townhouses's management company informing him of incoming maintenance. (There’s a joke to be made somewhere about the professional writer not having any physical paper to write on but it is what it is.)

 

He pauses after writing the opener of the note. If you have to caveat that something is going to sound ridiculous, you probably shouldn’t be saying it at all. And it _is_ fucking ridiculous that Jughead is about to write a letter to his neighbor—practically a perfect fucking stranger—because his goddamn dog is lovesick for said neighbor’s cat.

 

Completely, utterly ridiculous.

 

And yet here he is. Because for the past six mornings, Hot Dog has whined pitifully as they went on their morning stroll around the block, straining at the leash when they go past the home to their left and trying to locate his feline friend.

 

The neighborhood itself, a few miles outside of Boston, is artificial in a comforting way; they’re new houses, which he hates on principle, but he’ll take a working shower over the “charm” of the classic overpriced, glorified closets of downtown. Jughead doesn’t know any of his neighbors and thankfully the townhouse management wasn’t one that shoved “community events” down its residents’ throats. He’s made it a point to limit his social circle as much as possible, so it’s been the perfect match.

 

But he does know that the woman next door owns a creamsicle-colored cat who enjoys sunbathing on the front windowsill. The cat also enjoys lazily lifting its head to regard an overexcited Hot Dog barking hello and shoving his wet nose up against the glass. (The first few times it happened, Jughead felt a twinge of guilt for letting Hot Dog trample through the yard and slobber all over the window, but nobody ever came out to yell at him, so he let it slide.)

 

After several weeks of Hot Dog trying to say hello in his aggressively friendly manner, the cat eventually did something shocking to all three participants in this scenario: she (He? Who knows? Love is love, canine or feline, or what) bumped her nose against the window in response.

 

Even Jughead, cynic to end all cynics, had to admit that was pretty damn adorable.

.

.

.

Jughead never planned to be a pet owner. He didn’t really love the idea of being solely responsible for another creature’s well-being. He’d certainly had enough of that growing up.

 

And it wasn’t taking care of his sister that was the problem.

 

He loves Jellybean with all his heart and no matter how exhausted he was, Jughead was always prepared to make extra grilled cheese or check over her spelling homework or take her for bike rides when their dad was a little too obviously intoxicated—whether or not he had his own homework to complete or whether Jelly’s grilled cheese used the last of the non-moldy bread.

 

It was never the the best of circumstances, but Jughead never resented being responsible for Jellybean. No—it was more being responsible for his drunk father that Jughead couldn’t stand.

 

All the nights when Hog Eye called Jughead’s cell phone to let him know FP was passed out on the grimy bar again. Every time Jughead hid his father’s bike keys or his flask. All the $20 bills gone missing from Jughead’s wallet.

 

Every night—after moving out and heading to college without a backwards glance—that Jughead felt the pang of guilt that if, his father drank himself to death that night, it would be his fault. Because after his mom took off with Jellybean, Jughead was the only one around to be responsible for FP Jones.

 

And he fucking hated that feeling.   

 

So no, he never thought a pet was in his future. Growing up, Jughead was perfectly content to soak up all the animal love he could when visiting the Andrews’ house. He relished in taking over walking duties of Vegas for Archie whenever he was over, glad for the peace and quiet but for the crunch of gravel under shoe and paw, and Vegas’s happy panting. But just the same, there was a heavy sigh of relief when he could turn the leash back over to Mr. Andrews.

 

He loved Vegas; when he was eight and the Andrews brought home that tiny puppy, Jughead wanted nothing more than a puppy of his own. But at sixteen, he knew better. At sixteen, Jughead knew a dog deserves to live with a family that could afford to feed its kids _and_ any pets.

 

The Joneses were not that family.

 

Hot Dog was a surprise. Or, Jughead taking ownership of him was. Hot Dog initially had been the trailer park’s friendly stray that everyone pitched in to take care of. The realities of their collective living and home situations meant that nobody in particular could claim the then-runty stray as their own.

 

People would pool money to buy bags of discounted kibble, one of the more proactive angry Southside teens was always up to steal fresh cans of tennis balls from Riverdale High for him, and someone’s niece in Centreville was a veterinary technician who graciously gave him his vaccinations under the table.

 

He was everybody’s dog, which worked out well enough.

 

Hot Dog was there if you needed a silent companion while you waited on your porch for your drunk family member to finish throwing bottles, or when you were thrown out of your aunt’s place, or when you were bullied on the way home from school.

 

It broke Jughead’s heart, just a little, when he left for college. Almost like he’d known one of his buddies was leaving for good, Hot Dog trailed at his heels while he packed up the truck. As a parting gift, Jughead gave him his first ever legitimate chew toy, shaped like a tree branch and flavored like bacon. Still in his gangly, not quite a puppy, not quite a full-grown dog phase, Hot Dog tripped over his paws as he galloped away in excitement.

 

Jughead came back to Riverdale exactly once during college, to clear out his dad’s trailer after his most recent DWI arrest. This time, FP wasn’t getting out anytime soon. Though he’d packed up everything important to him before departing for Syracuse, something inexplicable drew him back to Sunnyside trailer park.

 

He couldn’t put a name to it until he pulled up the drive and saw a fully grown, _very_ shaggy Hot Dog bounding up to greet him—gnawed tree branch toy securely in his jaw.  

 

Something clenched in his stomach and Jughead felt the urge to take Hot Dog as his own, a feeling stronger than any other at that point in his life. It was a crossroads and though he didn’t believe in fate or luck or any of that bullshit, Jughead couldn’t help but think there may have been some kind of divine intervention in that moment.

 

Hot Dog needed a home and Jughead needed Hot Dog.

 

The extent of his okay-ing the decision with the Sunnyside community was to knock on old man Topaz’s door to ask if he minded. Mr. Topaz was often the one who picked up slack in their communal adoption of Hot Dog, buying new flea collars or containers of kibble from Mallmart when no one else did. He took one look at the sheepdog glued to Jughead’s heels at his front door and said gruffly, “I’ve got an extra leash in the closet. Think he’s got some tennis balls ‘round back too. Only weird thing he does is bark at the motorcycles.”

 

 _Can’t blame him,_ thought Jughead.

.

.

.

Hot Dog is one of the only grounding aspects of Jughead’s life. All the things that terrify him about the potential of following his father’s path are mitigated by the constant presence of his dog. He can’t leave town for days on end, or go on a bender, or quit his job, or get thrown out of his apartment and couch surf.

 

Not when a blissfully ignorant dope of a dog is home waiting for his meal and his walk and his pat on the head. Jughead may be hard on himself, but he refuses to fuck up enough to disappoint Hot Dog.

 

(Sometimes he wonders how just a dog can do all of this for him, when two children and a wife couldn’t do the same for his father. But when he thinks too long on that particular train of thought, Jughead gets the impulse to punch a wall. So he’s stopped wondering.)

 

Jughead alters his life around Hot Dog and, frankly, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

After that nose bump through the window, Jughead made it a point to incorporate their daily interaction in the morning routine. They’d get up, walk outside, and say hello to the cat before their laps around the neighborhood. Hot Dog had even taken to resting his head on their own windowsill, one that gives them a slight view of the cat’s favorite window, to stare out at his new friend. It is clearly the best part of Hot Dog’s day.

 

Until the cat-owner—he’s pretty sure it’s the woman with the blonde ponytail he’s seen out running—put a row of potted plants and flowers in the cat’s window. And Hot Dog is completely beside himself over the ordeal.  

 

If he were a more social being, Jughead might knock on her door, introduce himself and strike up a conversation before casually announcing that his dog is obsessed with her cat. It would be weird, for sure, but potentially less weird than Jughead writing a note and asking her to reconsider her plant placement for the sake of their weirdly attached pets that have never met without an inch of glass between them.

 

But Jughead _isn’t_ social and _doesn’t_ feel like befriending neighbors, despite the increasing frequency with which his coworkers rib him for not going to happy hour and his (singular) childhood friend Archie chastises him for never attempting to expand his friend circle.

 

It is easily the dumbest, most ridiculous thing he’s ever done—and he’s willingly gone by the name _Jughead_ since age five. This is also the stupidest thing he's ever written. And he's paid to write for a living.

 

(On his better days, anyway. Most days he just copyedits and tries to remember that the torturous nine-to-five days are so he can pay off the student loans he took so he _could_ write for a living. Which he sort of does, on the hours he’s not at his soul-sucking nine-to-five.)

 

The note feels absurd, and Jughead feels absurd when he slips it in the mail slot on their walk the next morning, but when Hot Dog does his absurd little doggie whine Jughead at least feels better knowing that he’s tried to do something.

 

He signs it _from your neighbor and Hot Dog the brokenhearted sheepdog,_ just for good measure.

 

Jughead tries to not think about his silly actions of the morning throughout the work day. As much as he is embarrassed by the over-eagerness of the note, he mainly hopes that the girl next door is kindhearted enough to take pity on the both of them.

 

(He’s learned by now that making assumptions face-value gets you nowhere, but something about the ponytailed woman feels so genuine that it positively emanates from her. And Jughead knows that not every pet owner is as much of a sap as him, but if she _is_ there’s no chance she could ignore his plea.)  

 

He tries to manage expectations upon his return, pointedly ignoring the cat’s (former) window. There’s a small part of him that just doesn’t want to deal with the reality of letting Hot Dog down, even if Jughead knows all too well that he has zero control over the actions of others. Impatience gets the best of him, though, and Jughead eventually peeks across the yard when he goes to his car to retrieve his travel coffee mug to wash.

 

By some miracle, Hot Dog’s little creamsicle friend is back in her perch, not a potted plant in sight. Taped to the window above her, in a delicate marker scrawl, is a sign that reads _FOR TRUE LOVE._

 

The grin breaks across his face before he can even stop to process. Who would have thought?

 

* * *

 

“When you start to feel yourself spiraling, find something grounding you can hold yourself to. Try to think of your happy place,” Betty’s therapist once told her.

 

Did she even _have_ one? It certainly wasn’t her childhood bedroom, where the oppressive pink walls made it hard to breathe and echoes of her mother’s pointed comments haunted her every action.

 

It may have been her high school newspaper office; the smell of fresh ink stamping her name squarely under _The Blue & Gold _as editor-in-chief. But it had been so many years since she spent time in that safe haven that Betty wasn’t sure she wanted to rely on a memory she can’t relive in the future.

 

At a loss for words, Betty’s voice had cracked when she told her therapist she didn’t think she had a happy place.

 

She knows it’s professionalism, but Betty is grateful when she doesn’t see a flash of pity reflected in her eyes as her therapist calmly says, “Well let’s work on that first, then.” It took several weeks to identify that a first step to finding a happy place was a determining a situation in which Betty’s hands were occupied; without the physical ability to default to her teenage self-harm tactic of digging her jagged nails into palms, it was much easier to take control of thoughts.

 

Betty hadn’t wanted an active happy place, though. The sea inside her mind is at its most choppy when she has nothing to do and it’s there that she needs to focus her energy.

 

“What if you were petting an animal,” Dr. Torres had suggested.

 

Oh, thought Betty. _Oh._  

 

And that’s how she had found herself at the local animal shelter, cooing over kittens and puppies. A dog seemed like too much a step; there were still days that Betty’s anxiety overtook her with such ferocity that she was unable to leave her room, and she didn’t want to jeopardize a dog’s well-being by not being able to walk him.

 

So a cat it was. The first cat to crawl into her lap in the visitation room was a beautiful orange and cream color. The cat’s intense purring reverberated through Betty and a calmness settled over her that she had never experienced before. The young teenager in a VOLUNTEER shirt took one look at her from across the room and a grin broke out across his face. “I think she’s decided she wants to go home with you.”

 

Betty couldn’t help but smile widely the whole time she was signing adoption papers, through her quick run to a pet store for necessary supplies, and the whole drive home with Caramel purring loudly from the passenger seat of her car.

 

And now when Betty feels her mind running at breakneck speed toward an anxiety attack, she practices Dr. Torres' calming technique of centering on her happy place before locating the central thought causing issues, her happy place is the armchair in her living room, Caramel curled up in her lap and purring contentedly.

 

Truly, nothing makes her happier.

.

.

.

Eventually, Betty notices the guy next door.

 

She doesn’t remember him moving in, so he must have been there nearly as long as she has, if not longer. Betty moved into the small Boston suburb nearly two years ago, fresh out of her undergraduate student teaching semester and ready to start the daunting career of middle school English teacher.

 

It’s a cute neighborhood, full of neat townhouses that are clearly new builds, and it’s a little too cookie cutter for her taste—especially after her seemingly picture-perfect suburban childhood—but her options were limited and she was desperate to take the first teaching position she could get to avoid moving back home after graduation.

 

In an effort to make it her own, Betty planted hydrangeas in the front yard, received permission to paint the door a warm green tone, and spent an inordinate amount of money buying antiques to decorate with. If she had to live in a home where all her neighbors had the same layout, she was going to spent as much of her paycheck on unique items to make it all her own as possible.

 

Betty’s space is homey, full of photos of her sister, her niece and nephew, selfies of her with her college roommate Veronica, art prints and concert posters, throw blankets and pillows in muted colors; despite the resentment of her carefully directed childhood, Betty still does love the color pink, so her bedroom features a beautiful hand-stitched quilt in a soft pink shade.

 

For as much as her personal touches made the home feel less perfectly set, it never truly felt lived in until Betty brought Caramel home. Once orange hairs dotted the couch and squeaky mice littered the floor and a enormously, ugly cat tree shared floor space, Betty acknowledged that the house appeared, and felt, lived-in in a way her childhood home and dorm rooms never did.

 

In another defiance of her upbringing, Betty held back from befriending the neighbors. She didn’t _want_ to feel obligated to bake brownies and knock on doors and slap on the signature Cooper Smile. And so, simply enough, she didn’t. Betty holed up, started therapy, and adopted Caramel.

 

Who would have thought that isolation felt so freeing?

 

Betty is curious about her neighbor with the sheepdog and the DiCaprio-in-Titanic style hair, though. It takes a few weeks before Betty realizes he lives directly next door. As she’s tossing her school bag in her car’s backseat in morning, she sees him exit the front door with the shaggy dog on his heels. The Cooper in her wants to wave politely, maybe introduce herself, make a good impression.

 

Instead, she gets in the front seat, starts the car, and smiles softly before zooming past. He’s pretty cute, she thinks. About the dog. _Definitely about the dog._

_._

_._

_._

Months and months later, Betty spies the guy walking up her front path and hears her mail slot open and close. Before she has a chance to open the door to say hello, he’s hurrying off toward his car. He’s taller than she noticed before and carries himself in a slightly hunched manner that she recognizes from her years of slouching so people wouldn’t pay attention to her or talk to her, or lay out their perfect expectations of her.

 

Maybe she’d taken the wrong approach, Betty thinks. Maybe it wasn’t all that bad to make friends with your neighbors.  

 

The note that now lays on her front mat is folded in thirds and _No. 134_ is hastily penned on top. Caramel, leaping down from her perch on the back of the couch, sniffs at it with an increased curiosity she usually reserves for treats.

 

Unfolding and scanned the letter, Betty starts giggling uncontrollably. Unbeknownst to her, it would appear that Caramel and the cute sheepdog next store had fallen into a Romeo and Juliet style romance from across the yard.

 

“Did you make yourself a puppy friend,” she coos at Caramel, who’s now winding her way through Betty’s legs and mewing innocently.

 

Thinking back, Betty supposes Caramel had been enjoying the window ledge that faces the front yard. She’d assumed the cat was fascinated by the birds or the passing cars. Never once had it occurred to her that Caramel would have made friends with the enormous dog easily five times her size.

 

The mental image of a Caramel relaxing in the sun-drenched window, looking out and trying to communicate with the lumbering dog brings her such joy that she’s nearly in tears from laughter. A flash of retroactive guilt flashes through her at—however accidentally—denying the two innocent parties their friendship.

 

Betty remembers the day she placed the flowers on the windowsill: after a string of dark, rainy days in the middle of a formerly-sunny spring, Betty found herself in a patented spiral—first worrying her students would be rowdy from the weather, then that she’d lose control of the class and be penned a bad teacher, then the myriad of things that could go wrong afterward; in an effort to take the _proactive steps_ Dr. Torres always suggests, Betty stopped by a nursery to pick up some potted daisies and give herself something bright and cheery to see first thing in the morning.

 

Caramel hadn’t seemed to mind, too distracted by a new object and then by the ensuing treats Betty scattered on the kitchen floor to make up for disturbing the cat’s napping perch.

 

And now, scooping up the purring cat, Betty realizes that she _had_ been meowing more than usual before settling into another napping location. Evidently Caramel took after her owner in never clearly articulating what bothered her.

 

She gently places Caramel on the floor by the window before placing the offending plants onto the kitchen island, to be rehomed and moved after work. Immediately, with a happy chirp and a flash of orange fur, Caramel is up on the windowsill and settling in. Smiling to herself, Betty rips a sheet of notebook paper from her school things, grabs a marker, and pens a brief note to tape to the window.

 

(She hopes the guy next door, and his brokenhearted dog, will appreciate it.)

 

The unexpected friendship—courtship? star-crossed love?—consumes Betty’s thoughts all day. She nearly considers putting in a film for her students by the time fifth period rolls around, having spent all of lunch wondering what the cute neighbor did for work and whether it would be too forward to invite him (and his dog) over to officially meet Caramel.

 

After work, she spends even more time pacing and thinking about whether this olive branch of friendship was worth extending or if she should just let it be. Betty watches the delivery guy hand off a pizza box to the dark-haired guy, watches him close the door behind him, and wonders what would happen if she just ...walked over and said hi.

 

What’s the worst that could happen?

 

(That’s a dangerous path, she tells herself. He could think she’s weird and tell her to leave him alone, or think she’s coming onto him and tell her to fuck off—even more terrifying, he could think she’s coming onto him and be equally interested.)

 

She breathes deeply, thinking of the calm that washes over her when Caramel’s purring vibrates against her chest. Steeling herself for what may come, Betty walks out her door, crosses the yard, and knocks on his door before she can stop himself.

 

The dog barks in excitement from behind the door, and somehow that bolsters Betty’s confidence. When he swings the door open to find her standing there, her neighbor looks thoroughly surprised but ultimately happy to see her.

 

“So,” she starts with a smile. “I hear our pets are soulmates.”

.

.

.

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

The way the girl next door’s face burns with embarrassment and the way she ducks her chin in shyness warms Jughead up to her immediately. Not that he wouldn’t have loved her on sight anyway; he doesn’t know what kind of person it takes to respond to a crazy letter about your neighbor’s dog being in love with your cat with an equally ridiculous note taped to your window, but it’s precisely the type of friend he wants to make.  

 

Jughead is so taken aback by her presence in his doorway that an expression of doubt starts to creep across her face. She’s taken two steps backward before he comes to his senses and stumbles over an awkward, “No, no, it’s okay! Stay!”

 

They hang suspended in time and discomfort before she speaks again, and Jughead is struck by the way her eyes sparkle in the fading sunlight and the way she fidgets with the ends of her ponytail. “I’m Betty, by the way. And Hot Dog’s star-crossed lover is Caramel.”

 

At the sound of his name, Hot Dog comes barrelling through Jughead’s legs to nudge playfully at Betty’s middle and leave a trail of slobber and fur in his wake. Unperturbed, Betty crouches down to scratch behind his ears.

 

“He loves that,” Jughead tells her with a smile. She blinks up at him and the swooping thing his stomach does at the look of utter adoration on her face can only be described as butterfly-like.

 

“I considered adopting a dog,” she says, almost more to herself than to Jughead. “It just felt like a bigger commitment than I could manage.”

 

“I get that.” His hands join hers in petting Hot Dog, who is blissed beyond belief over _two whole people_ giving him attention at once. “Hot Dog basically adopted me, more so than the other way around. He’s definitely a pain in the ass sometimes, like when he’s pining over a cat in the window, but it’s worth it.”

 

If Jughead were a more forward person, more prone to flirting—let alone a person with any _skill_ in the flirting department, a skill Archie loves to remind him he does not have—he would have tacked on an _absolutely worth it now that I’ve met you._   

 

But he’s not, so he doesn’t.

 

Instead, Jughead does something similarly unexpected: he invites her inside.

 

“I, uh, ate most of this pizza already,” he admits sheepishly. He tugs at the hem of his beanie, a nervous habit left over from an adolescence full of worry. “But there’s still some garlic knots and I have beer and wine in the fridge.”

 

Betty looks so startled by the offer that Jughead begins to panic, thinking he’s entirely misread the situation. But then the sparkle in her eyes is back and she smiles a surprised, thrilled little smile. “A garlic knot and some wine sounds great, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

 

When Jughead ushers her inside, he doesn’t even have to whistle for Hot Dog to follow, he’s just glued himself to Betty’s side and looks expectantly up at her while she pauses to take in Jughead’s place. It’s been a few years and several framed movie posters since the first time Archie visited and told Jughead it looked like he lived in a serial killer’s house, so his first inclination is to be self-conscious while the woman who keeps beautiful plants in her home and paints her front door fun colors observes his home.

 

“Tarantino fan, huh?” The comment is deadpan but her eyes are full of laughter as she inclines her head toward one of the frames featuring _Reservoir Dogs_. Jughead decides then and there that he wants to be friends with Betty.

 

“I mean, yes, but not in a complete asshole way. Because Tarantino is a dick. But I do love the art style on his movie posters.”

 

She nods in understanding. “I’ve always been more of a Hitchcock girl myself. Though Melanie Laurent has a pretty solid Hitchcock blonde vibe in _Inglorious Basterds._ ”

 

Scratch that, Jughead thinks. He’s pretty sure he wants to marry this woman.

 

Somewhat hesitantly, Betty settles into the corner of his worn leather couch. The couch, as it always does with anyone sitting on it, envelopes her in a way that Jughead knows is so comfortable it’s impossible to get up. Even so, she looks like she could flee at any moment.

 

(Jughead thinks he should maybe be offended, but he’s not. He gets it. He gets it so much that he wish he could rest a hand on her own fidgeting hands and tell her it’s okay if she needs to leave.)

 

When he brings her a (plastic) stemless glass of red wine and a (paper) plate of garlic knots, she smiles gratefully and clutches the glass like it’s her life raft. Betty strikes him as the type of girl who would own actual glassware and real plates, but also the type of girl who won’t judge him for his lack thereof.

 

“You ever think how trippy it is that we all live in essentially the same houses?” She sips at her wine, forgoing one of the garlic knots to use her free hand to stroke Hot Dog’s ears. The dog has situated himself as close to Betty as space will allow, resting his large head on her lap.

 

“Traitor,” Jughead huffs at Hot Dog with faux annoyance. He hmm’s for a moment before answering Betty. “I guess so, but I think it’s more funny than anything else.” Jughead has always found this neighborhood to be comforting in its simplicity, the uniformity putting all the residents on the same level with no indications of whether someone grew up dirt poor in a trailer park or not. “Like, it’s funny to think about whether anybody else here always catches their funny bone on the corner of the staircase stanchion or finds the electric stove infuriatingly slow to heat up anything.”

 

“Oh my god!” Betty groans. “These stoves are _terrible!_ It should not take so long to boil a pot of water.”

 

Conversation flows a little easier after that, complaints about the minor inconveniences of their very nice homes make way for talking about their jobs. Betty looks wistful when Jughead talks about copyediting, and then he commends her on her saintlike patience for being willing to teach a bunch of middle schoolers how to analyze plot.

 

Jughead polishes off the rest of the pizza while nursing a beer and they split the remaining garlic knots while Betty finishes her second glass of merlot. She’s increasingly animated as the wine seeps into her bloodstream, but not in a way that makes Jughead worry she’s had too much—he knows all the tells from watching FP during his adolescence, but Betty just seems to be less on edge and more comfortable in her own skin. An adorable flush creeps up her neck and even his single beer has Jughead wondering whether the blush spreads across her breastbone, catching himself staring a little too openly at where the soft blue sweater clings to her curves while Betty finishes her story about a student who wrote his essay on _The Outsiders_ having only watched the movie and not read the book.

 

It appears that Betty catches him on it too, if the deeper red of her cheeks is any indication. He feels like an ass and stands up quickly, muttering something about needing water.

 

Much to his surprise, Betty follows him into the kitchen with Hot Dog following her. She tosses their plates into the trash and rinses her glass in the sink. He’s mesmerized a little at the politeness of it all, watching her from his location at the open fridge door and considering dunking the entire water pitcher over himself to calm down.

 

“Betty, hey, you don’t need to clean up. This place is kind of a mess, a few extra things aren’t going to make a difference.”

 

“Oh, okay.” They’re in an unintended standoff on opposite sides of the kitchen, Betty now leaned against the counter and chewing nervously on her bottom lip. In the middle is Hot Dog, who looks like he isn’t quite sure who he wants to bother for pets. He settles on Jughead, which Jughead suspects is only because he’s standing closer to the treat jar than Betty is.  “I see where your loyalty stands, pup,” Betty says wryly.

 

Jughead can’t help but smile at her joke, at the soft expression on her face, at everything this evening turned out to be. He takes two treats out of the jar, lowering one to Hot Dog’s excited face and tossing one to Betty. Hot Dog, still chewing, takes off toward her and yips excitedly at her feet.

 

“His loyalty is to food and food alone. We have that in common.”

 

The joke falls a little flat, Jughead not infusing quite enough laughter into the statement. Betty looks up to him curiously but says nothing. He rubs at the back of his neck and tugs on the worn beanie again.

 

Unsure of how to backtrack from this now-uncomfortable silence, Jughead takes another huge gulp of water. It’s the wrong move, the water going down the wrong pipe and resulting a bout of aggressive coughing and throat-clearing. Betty moves over to him in alarm and makes to clap him on the back, so he gasps out a _wrong pipe_ in an effort to avoid her touch and make even more a fool of himself.

 

Also the wrong move, it appears. Because now, instead of hitting him on the back to clear his windpipe, she’s rubbing his shoulder to ease him through the coughing fit.

 

He wants to die of embarrassment, but is too distracted by how nice it feels to have her hand on his back and how the sweet floral scent of her perfume invades his senses. This is, without a doubt, the worst way to make a good first impression.

 

“You okay, there?” There’s a lilt of laughter in the question but the look on her face is still of gentle concern.

 

“I can breathe again, but I’m not sure my ego will recover from having my gorgeous neighbor watching me hack up a lung because I _choked on water._ ” Jughead freezes momentarily because that was not supposed to be said out loud.

 

Betty’s blush is back and she bites her lip and Jughead thinks maybe it’s alright he said that out loud.

 

“I think you’ll probably be okay on that front,” she says.

.

.

.

Betty Cooper consumes more of his thoughts over the next week than Jughead would care to admit. It’s unlike him to be this distracted by anything, let alone by a girl.

 

It’s quite possible he’s _never_ been this distracted by a girl. So it’s both a pro and a con that she lives next door.

 

A pro in that he now gets a daily wave and smile when they cross paths in the morning, him taking Hot Dog for a walk and her leaving for work, and that should he actually work up the nerve to ask her out, the walk next door is too short for him to chicken out once he starts the process. A con in that, in every waking moment since deciding he wants to ask her out, Jughead cannot stop glancing out his window to see if her blonde ponytail is in sight. He is so pathetic. And so mesmerized by everything about her.

 

So much so that even his deskmates at work have caught on.

 

“Jones!” He’s hit square in the forehead with a crumpled up sticky note.

 

“What?”

 

Toni Topaz looks at him with disdain across their divider. When she’s mad, the fluorescent pink in her hair gives the aura of being on fire. They have a relationship of good-natured ribbing but Jughead usually knows better than to push her buttons, lest he go down in flames.

 

“I just asked you four times what you wanted to order for lunch. Your opinion now holds no weight and we’re ordering Indian. You have thirty seconds to give me your order or I’m leaving without it.”

 

Quickly, Jughead scribbles down _chicken vindaloo + garlic naan x3_ on the post-it she threw at him and tosses it back to her.

 

Toni fixes him with a look. “What the hell are you even stuck on if you missed us talking about food for ten minutes? Do you have a fever?”

 

From across the room, Sweet Pea—whom Jughead can never quite get a read on, not even primarily because he is an easily six-foot-four guy with a leather jacket going by the nickname _Sweet Pea_ —chimes in. “If he’s not thinking about food he must have finally gotten laid or something.” Jughead knows he’s red-faced when he glares at Sweet Pea, which only serves to make the shit-eating grin on Sweet Pea’s face even bigger.

 

He wheels over to Jughead in his desk chair. “Alright, Toni’s out of earshot, so you have no excuse to not talk about girls now. Did you actually get some?”

 

“Sweet Pea, do you think the reason I don’t talk about my love life is because it’s private and _not_ because I’m worried about being crass in front of another woman?”

 

His coworker shrugs. “Actually I assumed it’s because you don’t have a love life.”

 

“Touché.” Jughead rolls his eyes. And then pauses. Because for as overtly obnoxious as Sweet Pea can be, he knows that the guy has been nothing but a serial monogamist for the few years they’ve worked together. Whereas Jughead has been nothing but a serial loner. “Suppose… suppose I _did_ have a love life opportunity. And suppose I was trying to stop tripping over my own two feet long enough to ask her out. Would you supposedly have any advice?”

 

His coworker looks thoughtful for a moment and then says what is possibly the kindest words Jughead has ever, and will ever, hear out of his mouth. “You’ve gotta get out of your own way, man. Way I see it, you’re the only one coming up with reasons someone shouldn’t date you.”

.

.

.

The thing about Jughead is that he’s spent his entire life doing nothing _but_ getting in his own way. He stubborn grasp on his already tenuous pride is the reason he consistently turned down the offer of the spare room with Fred Andrews, why he always made up excuses for staying on campus or at home when signing up for holiday shifts at work, why he hasn’t seen his kid sister in nearly a decade.

 

Nobody else, he’s always thought, needs to deal with his cargo plane full of baggage.

 

Not the Andrews family, not his coworkers, not his own sister.

 

Especially not the kind of person Betty Cooper seems to be—genuine and entirely too likely to take it upon herself to fix him, or break him out of his shell, or something to that effect.

 

He couldn’t fault her for it if she tried. A grown man still wearing a knit hat from his childhood and talking only to his dog is a man sorely in need of not only a friend, but a complete lifestyle overhaul. Jughead has no doubt Betty could pull that off. In fact, he’s almost sure he would even go along with it if it meant spending more time with talking pop culture with her and her megawatt smile.

 

That doesn’t mean he also is _entirely sure_ that if he lets himself befriend Betty, let alone try to date her, he will fuck the whole thing up. Spectacularly so.

 

(Somehow, he still wants to try.)

.

.

.

“I think she likes plants,” Jughead tells Sweet Pea over Vietnamese takeout in their breakroom a few days later. The room is too hip to be functional, and Jughead perches awkwardly on one of those half circle stools that look more like art than they act like a functional piece of furniture. It is also fluorescent green, which is far too obnoxious a color for a room where people supposedly go to relax.

 

Sweet Pea looks at him like he grew an extra head.

 

“Come again?”

 

He’s already regretting this. “The, uh, the hypothetical girl. She keeps a lot of plants and flowers. I could get something from the store or whatever and ask her how to not kill it.”

 

“Are you in the eighth fucking grade, Jug?” sighs Sweet Pea. And then: “That is kind of brilliant though.”

.

.

.

On his way home from work, Jughead stops at the grocery store for a couple of frozen pizzas, dog treats, and fresh milk for his cereal.

 

After standing bewildered in the produce-adjacent floral section for a few minutes, he selects a tiny potted cactus.

 

Might as well.

 

* * *

 

Betty has a problem. A problem that could very easily be solved by turning on her long-disused Cooper charm. Which, in and of itself, is an entirely separate problem.

 

She thinks—well, she _knows_ , but is ignoring that she knows, and has been for the better part of two weeks—that she has a crush on her next door neighbor.

 

After only an hour of knowing him, Betty was enamored with every little thing about Jughead Jones: the ridiculous flop of his hair, the way he talked with his hands when discussing a topic he was passionate about, the soft look he gave her that made her feel like he expected nothing of her but wanted to talk with her anyway, the beanie he wears while walking Hot Dog every morning that looks vaguely like a crown, his sleepy wave toward her as she heads to school.

 

The fact that he wrote her a damn note because his dog is in love with her cat.

 

And therein lies the crux of her issue: he’s her neighbor; any avenue this crush takes will only lead to awkwardness and a steep increase in her anxiety. And as her brain is wont to do, she speeds through the logical next steps and jumps right to, _I am terrified of being intimate with anyone, what if I scare him off?_

 

But, also: What if Jughead is just being polite and she misconstrued the lingering glances? Or what if the lingering glances were intentional and he just wants a fling without getting to know her? What if they go on a date and discover they ran out of things to discuss in their first encounter? How can she possibly live a hundred yards away from someone she tried and failed to date? What if it fails so spectacularly that Betty’s constant, mile-a-minute anxiety drives to her move?

 

She’s _already_ nervous about coming up with an excuse to hang out with him a second time, so what the hell is she supposed to do if it blows up in her face?

 

(What is she supposed to do if it _doesn’t_?)

 

Why Betty is harping over this _now_ , days after the fact, is beyond her. She hasn’t even interacted with Jughead for more than twenty seconds in well over a week. In all likelihood, their initial meeting was merely a blip on his radar and he thought of their interaction as everything Betty hated about her upbringing—politeness for politeness’ sake, nothing more.   

 

The anxiety settles over her bones in layers, each one weighing more than the previous, until she’s caught staring at the ceiling from her bed and gasping for breath. Sensing her discomfort, Caramel curls up in a tight ball next to Betty’s shoulder. The constant flutter of the cat’s heartbeat and the thrumming purr gently drag Betty to the surface of this morning’s wave.

 

It’s too late to call in for a sub, even though there’s nothing she would like more than to roll back over in her blankets and maybe call Dr. Torres, so Betty does what she grew up doing—she gets up, dresses in her work clothes, and smiles and nods her way through it.

 

(By third period, all of Ms. Cooper’s classes are allowed to have quiet reading time.)

.

.

.

At the end of the day, the tell-tale race of her brain and itch in her fingertips—nails neatly trimmed and just short enough to avoid doing the full damage to her palms they used to in her worst days—is all Betty needs to know she cannot, and should not, teach tomorrow.

 

She spends the very last ounce of her energy to throw together sub plans for the seventh and eighth graders, draft an email to her vice principal and the other teachers on her team, set an alarm at the precise time to have credibly woken up with a migraine and decided to call in, and text her therapist to ask about any openings the next day.

 

It’s not unlike Betty to use one of her allotted sick days to let her mind quiet itself—mental illness _is_ just as legitimate as the flu, she reminds herself once again—but she feels inexplicably guilty for this one.

 

Something to discuss with Dr. Torres tomorrow, she supposes.

 

Blackout shades drawn, blankets high around her chin, and Caramel purring contentedly beside her pillow, Betty falls asleep by 8:12pm.

.

.

.

As if to make matters worse, her mother calls the next morning.

 

Betty is still in bed, having woken up briefly to send in her notice and sub plans, and half asleep when she answers the phone without thinking. The sharp “ _Elizabeth!”_ has her sitting ramrod straight and cursing silently.

 

“Why are you on your phone during school, Elizabeth?”

 

“Mom,” she sighs. “You called _me_ in the middle of the school day.”

 

There’s a huff of annoyance on the other end of the line. Betty has a feeling that her mother called specifically to leave a voicemail and not have to deal with Betty inevitably putting up a fight about whatever she’s about to ask. “Yes, well, I had time now. Why are you not teaching right now? You weren’t fired were you? I told you teaching isn’t a sustainable career in this day and age.”

 

 _Close your eyes, count to three, think of Caramel’s purring._ “No, Mom. I woke up with a migraine and called in sick so I can go to the doctor.” Simple, actionable, and not that far from the truth—the keys to lying to Alice Cooper, perfected over years of complacency-turned-fibbing-turned-quiet-rebellion.

 

“Just make sure whichever medicine they give you doesn’t cause weight gain, dear.” Mercifully, Alice moves on before Betty has the time to register the comment and be properly offended. “Polly and Jason booked a last minute trip home this weekend for some absurd Blossom spectacle on Sunday and they’re bringing the twins with them. I expect you home for dinner Friday evening.”

 

“Mom, you know I can’t get all the way to Riverdale that early on a Friday after school.” What Betty really wants to say is, _Mom, it’s Wednesday you cannot give me two days’ warning that I’m expected to come home at the drop of a hat. I don’t_ **_want_ ** _to come home. That’s why I live five hours away from Riverdale._

 

“Well you might have been able to take a vacation day if you weren’t sick with a migraine today, Elizabeth.”

 

 _Not how it works, Mom._ But…

 

It’s been months since she’s seen Polly. She and Jason fled the Riverdale coop all the way to Chicago, something Betty is immensely jealous of, but which also means she hasn’t seen her niece and nephew since their christening. Betty wants her godchildren to grow up feeling overtly loved in the way she and Polly never did. And she can’t give that to them if she doesn’t see them whenever she has the opportunity to.

“I can’t guarantee dinnertime, but I will make it by Friday, Mom.”

 

More huffing over the line and Betty can practically see the tapping of her mother’s perfectly filed, painted red nails against the countertop. It’s the next thing her mother says, soft and like she almost didn’t mean to say it, that makes Betty wistful for the days before everything felt so fragile.

 

“It’ll be nice to have you both home again, Betty.”

.

.

.

The anxiety still sits heavy on her chest but after a slow morning of chamomile tea, fifteen minutes on the phone with her therapist who could only squeeze her in between appointments on such short notice, home renovation shows, and banking more photos of Caramel sleeping in funny positions in her phone library, the weight eases.

 

It won’t dissipate for days, and even then, it will never completely go away.

 

On good days, it will hardly bother her. On the best of days, Betty can slip into a few hours’ reprieve where she almost can taste what life would be like without this constant weight on her mind that works its way through her body.

 

One day, with more of the right people in her life, Betty hopes the length of her reprieves will extend.

 

(Maybe, _one day,_ Jughead could be one of those people.)

 

For now, though, Betty turns to her sister—who she’s now very excited to see,, despite the bad taste in her mouth from the phone call with their mother—and her college best friend, Veronica. Veronica, who, even as a reformed socialite with a heart of gold, doesn’t have a day job and is therefore available to video chat in the middle of the day.

 

“ _B,_ why didn’t you tell me it’s been so bad this week?” chastises Veronica, who’s currently sipping what looks to be a cappuccino out of an ornate, over-the-top mug in her gorgeous kitchen. (She did, upon hearing Betty was moving into a townhouse, offer to send her interior designer over to “at least renovate your kitchen, Betty. You can’t _not_ have marble countertops, that’s a crime.” Betty refused, but she loved the gesture.)

 

“You know how much I have trouble asking for help. I thought I could muscle my way through this one, but clearly that backfired. Especially now that I have to deal with my mother all weekend.”

 

“The bright side of suffering through your mother’s bullshit is that you’ll be able to see those adorable munchkins you love so much. Just try to remember that there will be enough good to balance out the bad, and hopefully that can ease some of your anxiety over going back home.”

 

“I suppose that’s true,” Betty sighs. “I just haven’t left for more than a day since I adopted Caramel and I’m having preemptive separation anxiety.”  

 

Veronica clucks in sympathy but fixes her with a pointed look. It has the same effect through a phone screen as it does in person. “I get that, but she’s a cat, sweetheart. She’ll be okay alone for a couple days. And _you_ need to get out of your house. Seriously. Go shopping and get some presents for your niece and nephew, buy some fresh flowers, and something chocolatey. Do something for yourself, even if you feel like you shouldn’t. It’ll be okay.”

 

As Betty has done for the majority of the last six years, she takes Veronica’s advice.

 

She can’t deny it feels good to be somewhere that isn’t her home or school, though she does take care to drive to the mall a few towns away to be sure not to run into any parents or colleagues. Armed with a handful of new books and stuffed animals for Junie and Dag, two bouquets of peonies, and a box of brownie mix—she prefers to do homemade but this was her compromise between from scratch and from a bakery—Betty feels a little more like herself when she returns home.

 

The added bonus is that she sees Jughead out walking Hot Dog when she pulls into their street. On impulse, she slows down and calls out her window. “Jug!” (Is she on a nickname basis with him? Was that too weird? Did she just make this already potentially awkward interaction even more awkward?)

 

He’s startled but half-jogs over to meet her, Hot Dog lagging behind, evidently not used to a pace any faster than a leisurely crawl. “Hey Betty! Isn’t it a school day?”

 

Oh. She hadn’t anticipated having to explain that she needed a mental health day. “Isn’t it a work day?” she counters lamely.

 

There’s that grin she’s already so fond of. “Someone refused to go for a walk this morning so I figured I’d take my lunch break and force him outside. It’s the only exercise either of us get and I feel like a complete sloth if it’s a walk-free day.”   

 

Veronica’s voice echoes in Betty’s mind. _Do something for yourself._

 

It comes out in a rush, but she says it and there’s no turning back now: “Do you and Hot Dog want to come over tonight? I’m making brownies and our lovebirds deserve a date after all this time.”

 

He pauses just long enough to have Betty frantically considering how she can save face. And then: “Who am I to refuse baked goods and true love?”

.

.

.

Jughead looks so endearingly hesitant when she answers his knock later that evening that Betty is struck with the retroactive hope she looked that cute when _she_ knocked on _his_ door. Though they’d made plans, he looks like he’s half expecting Betty to rescind her offer and shut the door in his face.

 

She doesn’t, obviously.

 

What she does do is quirk her brow at the contents of Jughead’s hands. Beside him, Hot Dog is prancing in place excitedly and she follows the trail of his fraying leash to where it’s looped around Jughead’s left hand. In the other hand is…

 

“A cactus?” It’s out of her mouth before she can think. Not the best way to say hello, she cringes.

 

He flushes and looks sheepish. “Flowers felt redundant considering that’s how this started. Truth be told, I bought this for myself at the store on a whim. But I am notorious for killing plants and I thought it might fare better with you.”

 

“Cacti are known for surviving crazy environments,” she says by way of an invitation inside. “I highly doubt you could kill it.”

 

Betty has no doubt the next thing out of his mouth would have been a self-deprecating joke had the interaction between Hot Dog and Caramel not distracted them both. Straining against his leash and whining, the sheepdog makes such a racket that Caramel lifts her head in a sleepy daze. Upon the two pets discovering the extent of this situation, Hot Dog breaks out of Jughead’s grip and Caramel leaps from her perch on the highest level of the cat tree to meet in the middle of Betty’s living room.

 

The sight of the large shaggy dog moving into downward dog position in deference to a cat the size of his head sniffing at his paw is ridiculous. Caramel continues to sniff curiously before tearing off in the opposite direction in a flash and—before any of them had a chance to react—returning with a length of pink ribbon in her mouth.

 

Caramel drops the ribbon between them and then rolls onto her stomach, looking up expectantly at Hot Dog, who nudges her belly lightly with his nose and then lies down next to her.

 

Everything about the scene before her is so pure that Betty can feel the telltale prick of tears at the back of her eyes. It’s been so long since she cried happy tears that the concept is utterly bewildering.

 

When she turns to look at Jughead, who is now much closer to her than when he first walked in the door. He’s watching her intensely.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yes,” she laughs, swiping at the stray tears. “It’s just so _sweet._ I wasn’t really expecting that. That ribbon is her favorite thing on the planet and she gets territorial with me when I try to put it away with the rest of her toys.”

 

“This is definitely something else,” he agrees.

 

They watch their pets sit contentedly for a few moments before Jughead breaks the silence. “Do I smell brownies?” He winks conspiratorially at Betty and follows her lead as she moves toward the kitchen, desperately trying to keep her face free of yet another blush.

 

“I’m afraid they’re the kind from the box. I usually bake everything from scratch but I had a craving today and I didn’t have the energy for that, but then I didn’t want to go store bought because those are always disappointing. So they’re fairly mediocre brownies as far as brownies go. I did have sugar and cocoa powder, so the frosting is homemade at least and ... _what?_ ” Betty knows she’s babbling and trails off at the surprised look on Jughead’s face.

 

“ _Betty,”_ he says in a tone that feels far too serious for a conversation about brownies. “You made me brownies. _And then_ you made frosting for said brownies. Do not apologize about anything you’re feeding to a human garbage disposal like me.” The joke shakes her loose, quiets the nervous loop in her head, and Betty giggles.

 

Jughead’s hand is on her forearm from when he stopped to placate her. His palm feels warm through the thin material of her shirt and it is as utterly distracting as it is to have his undivided attention on her.

 

“I’ll let you be the first to taste, then.” Betty hands him the corner piece she’d been cutting when he knocked.

 

The noise of satisfaction he makes after the first bite has her biting her bottom lip and fighting a losing battle to keep her face calm.

 

“God, Betty, these are incredible.”

 

When she manages out an _thank you,_ she knows it’s far more high pitched than is acceptable for a situation like this. Instead of dwelling on it, though, Betty busies herself cutting more brownies and decidedly _not_ thinking about other situations in which Jughead might make that noise.

.

.

.

She needn’t have worried about running out of conversation topics with Jughead.

 

(There are plenty of things Betty worries about that turn out completely fine. This one is a new kind of relief.)

 

Being around him is easy in a way that Betty never thought she was capable of; talking with Jughead comes as naturally as breathing, whether they’re making corny jokes about the inevitable Hot Dog-Caramel wedding or discussing the merit of John Hughes movies or debating which book from Betty’s curriculum is the objective best. (Jughead says it’s _The Call of the Wild._ Betty, _Flowers for Algernon.)_

 

Their chatting turns into a feedback loop of vulnerability, something brought about, perhaps, by the presence of their pets happily snuggled into one pile of gray, white, and orange fur. Betty quietly explains that she adopted Caramel as a means of managing her anxiety—Jughead moves to grab her hand, hesitates, and then follows through to squeeze tightly as she tells him about one of her most paralyzing panic attacks that convinced her to start therapy—which leads to Jughead sharing what exactly he meant by Hot Dog adopting him instead of the other way around.

 

Betty’s heart breaks for Jughead in the moment he looks up at her after mentioning his dad’s imprisonment, carefully watching for any sign that she’s about to cut and run simply because he was dealt a crappy hand of parental cards. “I haven’t seen my dad in almost five years now,” Jughead says, voice thick with an emotion Betty can’t place.

 

It doesn’t compare, but she feels compelled to say something—anything—about her own family to make sure that he gets just how much she understands.

 

In the time they’ve been talking, they’ve migrated closer and closer to each other on the couch under the pretense of moving closer to the plate of brownies between them. They’re facing each other, cross-legged, and Betty is close enough that she can see the weave of his beanie and smell faint “clean laundry” scent from the fabric softener he uses. So close that he could hold her hand again, or she could hold his if she wanted to.

 

(She does want to.)

 

“I have to go to my mom’s this weekend. I _hate_ going there. She makes me feel like I’m even crazier than I know I already am.” Betty swallows hard and the soft comforting smile Jughead gives her in return has her barrelling on. “When I was growing up, if I put even one foot out of line—got a poor grade, acted anything other than ladylike, had a friend she didn’t approve of, god forbid tried to have a _boyfriend_ —she was on my case. I thought it would get better after graduating and going to school, but somehow it got even worse. She hates that I teach but critiques my curriculum if I talk about, tells me I picked a terrible place to live, thinks adopting a cat was stupid but then tells me I should put more work into _sorting out my issues._ I do everything I can to be good enough, even just for myself, but then for these impossible, arbitrary standards she sets. And it’s never, ever good enough for her.”

 

Jughead’s hand is on her arm again and, once again, Betty finds that she’s crying.

 

“God, I’m sorry, this obviously is nothing compared to what you went through. Here I am complaining about my own mom caring _too much_ when you were trying to tell me about _your life_ —”

 

“Betty.” Jughead’s voice is gentle, but firm. “This isn’t a competition to see who has the shittiest parents or the worst habits from dealing with said shitty parents. You’re being empathetic, which you don’t need to do because you’ve got your own shitty situation. But you are and it’s okay.” His hand was rubbing slow circles on her shoulders but he drops it to scratch at Caramel’s ears when she leaps up into Betty’s lap, sensing her owner’s distress.

 

In this moment, she feels inexplicably drawn to him. He is so close and Betty can’t remember the last time anyone was this close to her.

 

(She can’t remember the last time she _let_ anybody this close to her. Not since the series of dates Veronica set her up with right after graduation that were perfectly fine, but still an enormous source of stress that left Betty sobbing in the stairwell of her building after each goodnight.)

 

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re amazing.” Oh, _wow,_ does Betty kind of want to kiss him. “And you make a pretty kickass boxed brownie.”

 

If she’s not mistaken, it looks like Jughead also kind of wants to kiss her.

 

She can smell the chocolate on his breath.

 

And then Hot Dog, not to be without his feline buddy for too long, noses his way into the middle of them, trying to get at where Caramel is curled up at Betty’s feet. The moment breaks and Betty mourns its loss, but even for a consolation prize this is about as good as it gets.

 

On a shuddery inhale, Betty rolls her neck and tries to collect herself. “It’s funny,” she says. “For as much as I’m dreading going home, I think I’m dreading leaving Caramel more. Even though I know she doesn’t depend on me _nearly_ as much as I do on her, I hate the thought of her being alone all weekend.”

 

Jughead’s hand falls to her thigh this time and Betty nearly leaps out of her skin, she wants so badly to kiss him. His gaze is unreadable, full of hesitation that Betty knows all too well, and she wonders if he still might try to kiss her.

 

Even if he _doesn’t_ try to kiss her, there’s a kindness in his eyes that washes over her pleasantly, the way a breeze brings relief on the hottest of days.

 

“Let me watch Caramel for you while you’re gone.”  

.

.

.

_tbc_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a while, mainly because I couldn't leave this world alone but had _zero_ how to create a plot out of a cute tumblr post. so here we are. many, many thanks to stillscape for helping me figure out what the hell I was doing with this. and for beta'ing the crap out of this hot mess. (tenses? what are tenses?)
> 
> additionally: it means a lot (x8000) if you'd take the time to comment. please, please, pretty pretty please. this was a labor of love, so I'd love to hear it if you enjoyed reading and what parts you may have enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many, many thanks to stillscape for beta-ing and to canariesrise for cheerleading.

Jughead is not someone who acts on impulse. If anything, he is cautious and methodical to a fault. He’s nearly missed many a deadline in college after spending too long revising and editing, will spend ten minutes in a grocery store aisle debating if the twenty-cent different between store-brand and name-brand is worth it, and lets his easily overwhelmed mind take the wheel at every turn. The first impulsive thing he’d done in his entire life was taking Hot Dog home with him from Riverdale. 

 

The second was offering to catsit for Betty Cooper. 

 

The offer had conveniently slipped right past his overanxious filter and gone straight from his brain to his mouth, no chance of taking it back. And for the first few seconds after saying it, Jughead wished he could have. But then Betty’s smile had lit up the room and she was reaching across the couch to hug him in thanks. 

 

(He’s certainly not complaining that he now has Betty’s number, or that he didn’t have to stumble his way through asking for it for no valid reason other than he finds her cute.)

 

He maybe regrets the offer only in that he has approximately no idea how to care for a cat. 

 

Thursday evening, the day before she’s due to leave, Betty shows him the basics of where the food and treats are, how to sift the litter box, and assures him that Caramel would perfectly fine and he doesn’t actually need to do anything a formal catsitter would. 

 

“Even if all you do,” she tells him, “is go over on Saturday for literally two seconds to confirm with your own two eyes that she’s napping her day away, that’s fine. It’ll just help me not focus on how much I would rather be at home than in my mother’s house.”

 

They’re unable to spend more than a few minutes together when he comes over, Jughead too nervous to impose and Betty saying something offhand about supposing she should pack, but when Jughead returns to his own home, his thoughts—as they so often have been lately—are consumed by Betty. He feels deeply her for, given how stressed she is to have to spend time at her childhood home. Jughead can’t even fathom what reaction he might have if he ever had to return to Sunnyside Trailer Park. 

 

The thought alone has his brain racing toward a dangerous though path, so he diverts it as best he can by grinning stupidly at Betty’s contact information in his phone and ruffling Hot Dog’s ears. 

 

“We’re gonna spend some quality time with your girlfriend this weekend, big guy.” Though Jughead knows the extent of his dog’s understanding of the English language is limited to  _ dinner, treat,  _ and  _ walk  _ (once upon a time he knew  _ sit  _ and  _ heel _ , but alas), he swears he sees Hot Dog’s eyes perk up. 

 

Briefly, he wonders if he bears the same expression when thinking about Betty. 

.

.

.

On his morning walk with Hot Dog, he sees her again. Betty is dashing out the door with several bags in hand, trying not to drop her coffee, but he steers Hot Dog into her driveway anyway. 

 

“Morning, Betts!” 

 

Somehow, despite being startled by his call, Betty keeps everything in her arms. She places everything in its appropriate spot in her car before turning to him. “Morning, you two,” she chirps, bending down to pat Hot Dog and then reaching up to kiss Jughead on the cheek like it’s part of the routine. 

 

Jughead, in turn, flounders. “Uh, hey, yeah. Hi. Good morning.” He refrains from touching his hand to his face, but the desire is there; her kiss didn’t quite feel real. It is before his coffee, so he could very well be hallucinating. 

 

“You said that already,” giggles Betty. 

 

Spectacular impression he’s making. Can’t even handle being kissed on the cheek without losing his ability to speak. 

 

Jughead knows that  _ she  _ knows it’s because of her small action, but still says, “I’m pre-coffee.” 

 

“Well I’ve got to go, but happy Friday! I’ll text you later!” 

 

Given that she’s usually out the door by the time Jughead is ready to get up, he should’ve guessed that Betty is a morning person. She seems far too chipper, but if it gets him a kiss on the cheek and the promise of a text, he will absolutely take it. So he stands awkwardly as she backs out of the drive, and waves even more awkwardly. 

 

It’s the picture of a domestic morning. Jughead doesn’t hate it. 

 

She does text him, just as he’s sitting down at his desk, and it makes his whole day. 

_Just wanted to say thanks again,_ she sends. _You’re so sweet to do this._ _I know I probably sound like crazy cat lady because cats are so self sufficient it’s not even funny and she would 100% not wait to eat my dead body. But I genuinely appreciate it._

 

_ I realize now that was an equally insane thing to send in a text wherein I preface that I am not insane _

 

_ I’m going to stop talking now _

 

_ Thank you again!  _

 

Jughead smiles, not just because he can picture the way Betty is likely blushing and chewing her lip in embarrassment, but also because she’s the kind of person who uses  _ wherein  _ in a text message. When he tells her that in an answering text message, she texts him back with an emoji wearing glasses, which he takes to be her poking fun at herself again. 

 

On a whim, he sends her a message that reads,  _ It’s okay I like my crazy cat ladies to have the sexy librarian vibe.  _ The ridiculous burst of happiness resulting from the next emoji she sends—the kissing cat face—should embarrass him. (It doesn’t.)

 

He’s in deep, which Sweet Pea and Toni have caught onto and begun to mock him mercilessly for. 

 

“So let me get this straight,” Toni says while munching on an egg roll during lunch. “You’ve only met her, what, twice, haven’t even asked her out, and she’s got you watching her cat for a weekend? Dude, you are so whipped.” 

 

“He’s not whipped.” Sweet Pea comes to his aid before Jughead even has a chance to defend himself. “He’s just playing the long game. It’s a solid strategic move.”

 

Toni rolls her eyes. “Whatever, as long as the end of the game includes a little giving—” she makes a crude hand gesture that sends Sweet Pea into a peal of laughter “—then you’re golden.” 

 

Officially over the conversation, Jughead whips a fortune cookie at each of them. Toni’s hits her in the nose while Sweet Pea catches his before unwrapping it and cracking it open. 

 

“I am  _ not,”  _ Jughead says pointedly, “playing any sort of game. She’s pretty, I like her, and she lives next door. I’m just trying to feel things out. It’s called being  _ nice,  _ you assholes.” 

 

“Nice guys finish last, Jones.” A wicked grin crosses Toni’s face, “Or not at all.” Jughead stalks out of the breakroom and keeps his noise-cancelling headphones on for the rest of the day. 

 

A few hours later, after Jughead has ignored all three IMs Sweet Pea sent him, he’s forced to take off his headphones when Sweet Pea firmly plans himself between Jughead and the water fountain

 

“Come on, Sweets,” Jughead groans, pulling his headphones down to rest around his neck. “I’m not in the fucking mood.” 

 

“Listen, Jones. We were just giving you a little grief. It’s not that often you even talk about your life enough for us to rib on you. I didn’t think Toni would be quite such a ball-buster, though, so I’m sorry it got weird.” 

 

A passive apology if ever he heard one. “Gee thanks,” Jughead grumbles. He shoves past Sweet Pea to get to the fountain and unscrews the lid to his bottle. But he’s stuck here wishing for the water to pour faster, so Sweet Pea carries on. 

 

“I mean you still need to ask the girl on a goddamn date. But cat sitting seems like a solid first step. It means she trusts you at least” 

 

Funny enough, Jughead thinks, he’d been told the same thing during his long overdue phone call with Archie a few nights prior. Archie, he of the endless one-night stands, has never had any kind of useful advice pertaining to any aspect of Jughead’s life, let alone his love life, but is nevertheless an excellent sounding board. And a good litmus test for whether Jughead is making a boneheaded decision. 

 

(He’s usually not. But for their entire adolescence, Jughead’s go-to question was “what would Archie do?” Whatever the answer, Jughead did the opposite. His best friend is harmless and always means well, but his eternal frat bro personality has never exactly jived with Jughead’s reserved nature.)

 

“I mean, Jug,” Archie said, “Who would you rather watch Hot Dog? A stranger off the street, or someone you don’t really know but have gotten a good vibe from? At the very least she trusts you not to ransack her underwear drawer or to lose her cat. That’s not a bad leg to stand on.” 

 

“Always with the words of wisdom, Archibald. You’re so helpful.”

 

With Archie’s words ringing in his ears and the water bottle nearly full, Jughead sighs and turns to look at his coworker. “Alright. You may have a point.” 

 

Sweet Pea scoffs. “Of course I do. You’ll be fine, just don’t do anything weird like dig through her laundry for her panties.” He gives him what Jughead thinks is supposed to be a friendly “bro” nudge on the shoulder and walks off.

 

“Don’t be a jackass,” Jughead calls down the hallway. 

 

Great, he thinks. Just as he had when Archie brought it up, now Jughead is doing his best to not think about what kind of underwear Betty wears. 

.

.

.

It’s almost unsettling to see Betty’s home without her in it. Though Jughead has only been there briefly, the entire space seems ever so slightly muted without the glimmer of her smile or the sound of her laughter inside. It has all the same things: the green door, the scattered felt mice and jangling bells, the plants in the window, Betty’s face grinning out at him from framed photos; it’s  _ her,  _ even if Jughead can’t quite claim that he knows her at all after so little time together. But it still doesn’t feel the same as it had that first night he’d come over. 

 

Maybe it was just the magic of the unknown, or the perilous emotions in the air, or the camaraderie over a plate of baked goods. 

 

Maybe it was a once in a lifetime strike of lightning, alighting his insides with fire. 

 

Maybe Jughead is just enamored with the idea of someone like Betty Cooper. 

 

Or maybe, Jughead chastises himself, maybe he’s being melodramatic and Betty is just as wonderful and heartwarming as she was that night, and she always will be. 

 

(He sees a saran-wrapped plate of what look to be snickerdoodles on the kitchen counter, complete with a note that reads “Thank you, Jug!” and decides he is, in fact, being melodramatic.

 

Much as it pains him to admit, Sweet Pea appears to be correct. He’s just getting in his own goddamn way.) 

 

Jughead digs into the plate and devours two cookies in no time at all. As he picks up a noisy toy, shaking it to get Caramel’s attention from wherever she’s napping, he taps a quick message to Betty. 

 

_ I’m nondiscriminatory when it comes to baked goods, but I think your snickerdoodles are my new all-time favorite.  _

 

Caramel emerges from behind Betty’s couch, mewling softly and stretching her limbs, when Jughead’s phone lights up. His stomach does a ridiculous little wobble to see that it’s Betty  _ calling  _ to answer his text.

 

He picks up immediately. 

 

“You did  _ not  _ have to go over today!” Betty says. “You’re supposed to be making me feel like less of a crazy cat lady, not enabling me.” Beneath her voice, he can hear the strains of soft music playing through her radio. In a flash, Jughead pictures her driving and singing along. 

 

Just like that, the energy of the room comes alive. Betty, it’s definitely just Betty. 

 

“It must have been my sixth sense telling me there’d be food if I came over after work,” he chuckles. Caramel winds her way around his legs and looks up expectantly, as if to say  _ You are not my human.  _ “I figured I’d check on her solo now and then bring Hot Dog over tomorrow for a soulmate date.” 

 

“Aw, I’m sure she’ll love that.” Betty laughs and then there’s a long pause. When she resumes speaking, she sounds weary. “Is it bad that I’d rather be home to watch that than to be at my mother’s with my niece and nephew?”

 

“It’s understandable.” Jughead more than understands it himself. Given the stories Betty’s told him of how she was expected to behave and perform growing up, he gets the distinct impression that her mother would _ not  _ understand. “Not that my opinion matters since I’ve known you for all of a month, but I think you’ll be glad you went once you’re there.” 

 

He hears her sigh through the phone. “You’re probably right.” Jughead smiles, satisfied with himself. “And Jughead?”

 

“Yeah.” 

 

“Even if it’s not been that long, I do value your opinion. So thank you.” 

 

A mix of pride and embarrassment washes over him, and he’s glad they’re separated by the phone so Betty cannot see what her compliment just did to him. 

 

“Of course,” he chokes out. 

 

“I should get back to paying attention to the road. Thank you again, Jug. Send me photos if Caramel and Hot Dog do anything cute, okay?” 

 

“Pinky promise.” 

 

When he hangs up, Jughead wants to smack himself for saying something as inane as  _ pinky promise  _ but it’s too late. “What do you think, Caramel, huh?” he asks the cat as she leaps up to the arm of the couch, presumably to be at a better level to receive attention. “Does your mom think I’m painfully awkward, or does she find it endearing?” 

 

Caramel gives an answer in the form of swatting at his hand when he pats her side. 

 

“Well, that’s a glowing recommendation,” he mutters. 

.

.

.

The next morning, Jughead places blame  _ squarely  _ on Archie and Sweet Pea for the fact that Betty (and her Schrodinger’s lingerie) was the subject of his dreams. 

 

He takes a very cold shower and drinks several cups of coffee to wipe the tantalizing thought of Betty liking—and trusting—him enough to let him peel off her clothes and worship whatever lies underneath from him mind. Hot Dog whines a little bit when they pass Betty’s driveway on their later-than-usual walk, tugging on his leash in the direction of his fluffy orange friend, but Jughead wants to put a little more time and mental distance between his slightly pervy dream and going into the home of the subject of said dream. 

 

After the walk, some more coffee, and a lot of bacon, Jughead clocks in a few hours working on his latest project. It had started as a few stray thoughts on the decrepit drive-in back in Riverdale, where his parents would take him and Jellybean out on nights after the louder fights and ply them with peanut M&Ms and Red Vines, where Jughead had his first ever paying job running the reels. As he mused more and more, paragraphs turned in pages turned into a larger think-piece sort of essay on the nostalgia of small-town America and how town staples like drive-in theaters or roller rinks or roadside diners could unify all corners of a easily divided town. The Twilight Drive-In brought kids from run-down trailers with disappearing parents and those suffering the behind the scenes experiences of a Norman Rockwell painting together for nights to show Hitchcock’s and Kubrick’s finest, extra-large root beers, and buttery popcorn. 

 

The drive-in is the only part of Riverdale that Jughead misses. 

 

(He loves writing about it, even if he doesn’t love the latent abandonment issues that writing necessitates him to work through.) 

 

It is, at least, an effective way to clear his head of any and all romantic feelings toward Betty. In fact, he feels rather morose as he walks through her front door and unclips Hot Dog’s leash to let him roam and find Caramel. 

 

As he leans against her kitchen counter, Jughead can see the appeal of keeping plants—keeping plants that are  _ alive,  _ anyhow. Both the bright colors and the smell of the fresh flowers on her window sills and counters are enough to revive his mood. Maybe he  _ should _ ask Betty for tips on plant care. 

 

Among the greenery, Jughead spots the miniscule (pathetic) cactus he’d brought her a few days earlier, which he must have missed when he was over the day before. Not that he expected her to  _ not  _ keep it, but the sight still makes him smile. 

 

Jughead is accustomed to feeling forgotten; not once since he’d met Betty has he felt that way with her. If anything, he’s felt  _ seen.  _ It’s a welcome change. 

 

Hot Dog trots into the kitchen, jangling slightly, which Jughead comes to find is because he’s picked up a pint-sized blue tennis ball that must have a bell concealed inside. “Hot Dog,” he laughs. “You cannot steal your friend’s toys, that’s not very nice.” Jughead glances around to look for a telltale glimpse of orange fur. “Where  _ is  _ your friend, pup?” 

 

A brief walk around the first floor yield no results; Caramel is not napping in any of the windowsills or any of the furniture and has not appeared, despite all the noise her larger, furry friend is making with the toy. 

 

This is  _ fine _ , he tells himself. Cats are different from dogs. They do not answer to their names and they’re small and can fit in weird places. This is absolutely  _ not a reason to panic.  _ All he needs to do is check the other rooms and Caramel is sure to be somewhere. 

 

Given that the home is a nearly identical layout as his own, Jughead quickly checks through the downstairs closet and pantry before climbing the stairs. If he weren’t consumed with worry that he’s lost his neighbor’s cat—his neighbor that he would really like to date—he might feel more awkward about peering through Betty’s home in her absence. 

 

(He does smile to himself when he sees that her shower curtain is printed with cartoon fish in varying colors, that she keeps a sticky note reading “BREATHE” taped to her mirror, and that her nightstand holds cat treats, two true crimes novels, a journal, and a framed photo of what he assumes to be her and her sister as kids. The more glimpses he catches of Betty, the more he wants see the whole picture.) 

 

There’s still no sign of the cat. He snatches the bag of cat treats up and shakes it, wondering if Caramel reacts to he treats the way Hot Dog does to his. 

 

She does not. But Hot Dog does nose at Jughead’s hands in an effort to get at her treats. 

 

This is decidedly not good. 

 

Jughead checks all the rooms again, under the furniture, in each closet, on each bookshelf. 

 

(He cannot  _ wait  _ to pick Betty’s brain about her reading choices. ...if she decides to speak to him again after he’s apparently  _ lost her fucking cat. _ )  

 

Stress grips at throat and he chugs a glass of water to give himself time to think. He came over yesterday, he saw Caramel, sent the photo to Betty, and almost definitely saw Caramel on the couch again before he left and locked the door. 

 

He  _ thinks.  _

 

Of all the times for his steel trap memory to fail him. 

 

Hot Dog, ever the hapless assistant, just wags his tail and bats around the jangly cat toy. It sounds like the toy is mocking him. 

 

“Now would be a great time for you to utilize any bloodhound in your roots, Hot Dog,” sighs Jughead. 

 

He can’t text or call Betty yet. He knows how much Caramel means to her, and he refuses to stress her out unnecessarily while she’s already stuck in an anxiety-inducing situation unless it’s truly an issue. 

 

Caramel just has to be hiding. 

 

It doesn’t stop him from scrolling through his contacts list and trying to find  _ anyone  _ he knows who he thinks might own a cat. He is several results pages into his “places a cat would hide” google search when a text from Sweet Pea pops up. 

 

_ How’s cat sitting, Romeo?  _

 

Jughead sighs, but knows he needs any support he can get in this moment. He hits the call button. 

 

Before Sweet Pea can even say hello, Jughead cuts him off. “I cannot find her fucking cat and I’m panicking that she got out and Betty is going to kill me for losing her pet.”

 

“Off to a great start, dude. Have you checked all the rooms?”

 

He can’t exactly blame Sweet Pea for laughing because if he were on the receiving end of this phone call, it’d be pretty funny. Even so, the laugh grates on his nerves. “No, Sweets, I didn’t see the cat in the singular room I’m standing in and decided she was lost on that fact alone. Yes, I checked all the rooms, damnit.”

 

The panic in his tone sobers his friend. “Alright, man, try to chill. You’ve got the same floor plan, right? Any small spots in your place that a cat could fit in?”

 

“I dunno, maybe? I also don’t want to start tearing her place apart. I feel like it’s creepy enough I just went into her bedroom closet and bathroom.” 

 

“Fair enough. Maybe just sit it out for a bit longer to see if it pops out of nowhere? I feel like you would’ve noticed if it got out but probably couldn’t hurt to call animal control either.”

 

At the mention of animal control, Jughead’s stomach drops. If he let out Caramel and she got picked up by animal control— _ or worse— _ he is never going to forgive himself. He also knows, looking at Hot Dog and thinking what he would want in this situation, that he just needs to call Betty. If it were reverse and Hot Dog got loose, Jughead would want to know right away. The fluffily absurd dog is his entire life and he knows Caramel is the same for Betty. 

 

She deserves to know. 

 

Jughead hangs up on Sweet Pea and presses the call button again immediately. 

 

Betty picks up on the fourth ring with an exasperated, “I’ll be right back, Mom, it’s my friend who’s watching Caramel,” and then a cheerful, “Hi, Jug!” 

 

His heart swells ever so slightly at the use of “friend” over “neighbor” or “cat sitter,” and then he remembers the reality of the situation. 

 

“Hey Betty, sorry to bug you while you’re with family.” 

 

“Oh god please don’t worry.” He can hear and picture the accompanying eye roll. “This is a more than welcome distraction from my mother.” 

 

Jughead sighs. “Probably not after what I’m about to say.” He swallows hard and runs a hand over Hot Dog’s snout to steady himself. “I, uh, I can’t find Caramel. And I checked, like,  _ everywhere.  _ Short of tearing your house apart, which I will happily do but didn’t want to without telling you and I am so,  _ so  _ sure she was inside when I left last night but I truly can’t find her and I’m worried I might have let her out and I’m so fucking sorry but I just couldn’t not let you know.” He’s breathing hard by the time he lets the rambling died off and waits with bated breath for Betty to respond.  __

 

“Jug, breathe, okay?” Her voice is so soothing he could scream. He’s lost  _ her  _ cat and  _ she’s  _ on the phone trying to calm  _ him  _ down. What the actual hell is wrong with him. “Do me a favor and grab one of the toys that’s a big feather attached to a handle.” 

 

Glancing around wildly, he spots one on couch and picks up the blue and yellow feathered ...thing. “Okay, got it.” 

 

“Great. Now take that over to the kitchen and dangle it at the corner baseboard of the cabinets below the sink.” 

 

Jughead follows her directions to a T and briefly realizes he would probably follow her directly into traffic if she asked him to. Instead, he waves the toy around awkwardly for a few moments. After about twenty seconds, he sees an orange paw reach out from the corner and grasp at the feathers.

 

“Holy shit!” he cries. He drops to his knees, placing the phone on the ground next to him, and peers at the space between the floor and the cabinet. There’s a small gap in the baseboard that he can just barely see a pair of eyes through. “You sneaky little bitch,” he croons at Caramel. Hot Dog comes snuffing up behind him and pushes Jughead out of the way to investigate on his own. 

 

“Jug?” Betty repeats his name on the phone and he picks the phone back up. 

 

“How on earth did you know where she was?” 

 

The light sound of her laughter over the line makes him giddy. “She found that spot like two days after I brought her home and scared the crap out of me because I couldn’t find her. Turns out there’s a huge gap in that cabinet corner that isn’t blocked off. It’s one of her favorite hiding spots. I eventually had to tear the baseboard out because she got bigger and would get stuck coming out.” 

 

“Caramel might actually give Hot Dog a run for his money for most ridiculous pet,” Jughead groans, watching the two play a bizarre game of paw wars through the cabinet next to him. 

 

“They’re really something else, aren’t they.” Jughead can finally feel his heart rate returning to normal until Betty repeats his name again. “Hey, Juggie?” 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Thanks for calling.” 

 

* * *

 

Betty’s poker face is legendary. 

 

One does not escape the Cooper house without perfecting the art of the fake smile, the one that doesn’t reach the eyes but is still blinding enough to fool anyone not looking closely. Alice has it, Polly has it, and Betty’s fairly certain even the twins will learn it eventually. 

 

But with a lifetime of the Cooper Smile comes the facade to use even inside the Cooper home. Betty used it to lie about eating cookies, to convince Alice that she and Polly were just going to the library and not to the movies, to pretend she was not on such a razor’s edge of anxiety that something as tiny as not having the right pen in class would send her into such a spiral while away at college that she was advised to take a short leave of absence. 

 

(She lied to Alice about that one as well.) 

 

Betty is skilled in the art of grinning and bearing it. The only person who has ever been able to call her on it is Polly. 

 

Which is why it’s been enormously difficult to keep her face blank when Betty ends up texting with Jughead for the entire time she’s home, after that adorably frantic phone call. 

 

She’d been doing well until she accidentally giggles into her orange juice during Sunday breakfast at a selfie Jughead sends of Caramel wound around his neck and trying to gnaw on his beanie. She turns it into a cough, enough to satisfy Alice and Jason, but Polly fixes her with a pointed look. 

 

The phone stays on silent and under her thigh for the rest of the meal and Betty is nearing her escape of offering to do the dishes—even if it means subjecting herself to half an hour of her mother nitpicking at every excruciating detail of her life—when Polly, apparently better at her own just-for-Alice facade than Betty thought, traps her. 

 

“JJ, why don’t you help Mom clean up? Betty and I will make sure the kids pick up all their toys before we get ready to go to your parents’ house.” Once in the family room, where the twins had run off too earlier after scarfing down sugary breakfast cereal and then begging for Animal Planet (much to Alice’s disdain, on both counts), Polly lobbies her attack. “Junie and Dag, please go upstairs and get your nice clothes out of Mommy’s blue bag, okay?” 

 

Betty is suddenly very preoccupied with Juniper’s stuffed frog. 

 

“Spill,” her sister demands. 

 

“Spill what, Pols?”

 

“Don’t you play coy with me. That may have worked when you stole my lipstick in high school and convinced Mom to let you visit me at school my first semester, but having toddlers sharpens your bullshit detector.” Polly bounces down onto the couch, right next to Betty. “ _ Who  _ have you been texting with since last night?” Her sister’s eyes shine with excitement and some of Betty’s own good mood bubbles back to the surface in response. 

 

(It’s been ages since she had time with Polly that wasn’t about the twins, or her wedding, or Jason, or Alice being a terror. It feels nice. Even if Betty’s trying to temper her expectations of what’s brewing between her and Jughead, the chance to engage in some good old giddy crush-gossiping is too strong to overcome.) 

 

“Swear you won’t say anything?” Betty pleads. 

 

With a roll of her eyes so startlingly close to their mother’s it’s alarming, Polly says, “Who am I going to tell?  _ Mom?  _ The girls at pilates?” 

 

“If you tell Jason, you know it’ll get back to Mom in his endless quest to get on her good side. And don’t even—” she adds at Polly’s indignant look. “I love him, but he is going to be glued to Mom’s side to the grave in an effort to confirm she doesn’t hate him.” 

 

Alice  _ doesn’t  _ hate Jason. But she doesn’t love him, either. And Betty likes her brother-in-law well enough—her sister is happy, he’s a good dad, he’ll talk books with Betty—but he is the worst kind of brown-noser when it comes to the holy grail of Alice’s approval. 

 

“Fine, fine,” Polly grumbles. “Pinky swear. Now tell me  _ everything. _ ” 

 

Betty’s inner fifteen-year-old urges her to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s my neighbor, the one who’s keeping an eye on Caramel for me. He’s ...god, I don’t know, Pol. He’s so  _ sweet _ , and funny, and he understands my anxiety. I just have this really wonderful gut feeling about him, even from the start.” 

 

“That is  _ amazing,  _ Betts.” Polly leans in and makes a ridiculous play at waggling her eyebrows. “ _ And? _ ” 

 

If she weren’t so caught up in acting like a schoolgirl with a crush, Betty would have waved off her sister. “ _ And  _ he’s very good looking.” For a brief moment, she considers sharing the photo Jughead sent earlier but decides against it. Betty wants to keep as much of this for herself as she can, even if Polly  _ is  _ over the moon about her younger sister finally having a guy to talk about. 

 

It’s  _ that  _ part that has Betty hesitating too. 

 

She isn’t a spinster; before all the failed dates after graduation, Betty dabbled in dating in college. She even found herself partial to the occasional fling because no commitment meant no expectations, which meant no way to fail and no ensuing spiral. She _knows_ (thanks to Dr. Torres) that her hesitation to date as an adult is rooted in her unwillingness to lean into the vulnerability required to enter a full-fledged relationship. 

 

WIth Jughead, though—with Jughead she’s already let herself show vulnerability. It had terrified her a little, but she felt safe to share when Jughead put some of his own cards on the table too. 

 

It might not be so bad to try this. 

 

(Assuming, of course, that her feelings are reciprocated. The flirty texts and occasional innuendo are telling Betty that they are. The voice in the back of her mind—the one that sounds like Alice, not Veronica—is telling her not to be so sure.) 

.

.

.

For the first time in a long time—possibly for the first time ever—Betty doesn’t want to leave her mom’s house. She’s comforted by the soft strands of Juniper’s strawberry blonde hair in her hands while she braids it for her excited niece, by the way Polly has run interference for Betty by capturing Alice in conversations about parenting and school systems and more than a couple comments on how she hopes the twins will have a teacher like Betty one day, by the way her breathing catches just a little when her phone vibrates with a text message from Jughead. 

 

That in and of itself should be a reason she’s excited to go home: spending more time with Jughead, having her breath catch at the way he looks at her. But it feels safe this way. When they’re separated by a few hundred miles of highway and data plan megabytes, instead of two walls and a mere few hundred feet, Betty has the time to carefully weigh each and every word of her response. She can debate if using another emoji is too childish or if using another adverb will send his copyeditor tendencies into overdrive. 

 

Betty can’t screw any of this up if she has the time and space to do it all properly. 

 

_ You’re being ridiculous _ , Veronica texts her that morning. 

 

(Polly said the exact same thing, which is why Betty texted Veronica in the first place. Upon reading her best friend’s answer, she doesn’t know why she attempted that. When it comes to gently prodding Betty out of her mental spirals, Polly and Veronica are uncannily similar.) 

 

_ I am NOT,  _ Betty taps out with one hand, ruffling Dagwood’s ginger curls with the other.  _ Haven’t you ever been nervous about a guy you like?  _

 

_ I have. And then I put on lipstick and my big girl pants, and use my skills to make him the nervous one.  _

 

_ You and I have very different skill sets, V.  _

 

_ Advice still stands, B.  _

 

She’s right. And Betty  _ knows  _ she’s right. It doesn’t make her any less nervous about whatever this  _ thing  _ with Jughead is. 

 

Even if he has been nothing but nice and flirtatious since they met. And even if he sent her another picture, Caramel on his lap and Hot Dog at his feet on her couch, with the message  _ I think we’re all happy you get back today.  _

.

.

.

Betty cries when she eventually packs up her overnight bag and places it in her backseat to head home. Polly and Jason are doing the same, making the trek across town for the Blossom Family  _ Something _ so she takes advantage of the chaos of wrangling two toddlers in dress clothing into a car to slip out. 

 

The happy shrieks she gets from her niece and nephew after kissing their foreheads and strapping them into their booster seats make her heart swell, but the happiness deflates the moment she backs her car out of the Cooper driveway. Polly is waving from where she’s jamming toys into their trunk and Betty catches a glimpse of Jason pressing a kiss to Polly’s disheveled ponytail. 

 

In that moment, she wishes so fiercely for more time with her sister that it makes her tear up. She turns on the radio and tries to focus on anything else. 

.

.

.

The drive back to the greater Boston area takes Betty nearly twice as long as usual. Due to some unforeseen traffic and an inconvenient exit ramp closure, she’s had more than enough time to decompress from Alice, be content for a little while, and then spiral herself into oblivion about missing her sister, niece, and nephew, and how she might never ever have kids of her own if she can’t get over herself enough to just ask out a guy she likes. 

 

By the time Betty throws her car into park in front of her house, she’s never been so happy to see the cookie cutter facade. Caramel’s purrs are the most beautiful thing she’s ever heard and Betty is more than happy to plop into a sitting position right in the entryway to let her nuzzle her welcome.   

 

Alice might have sniffed disapprovingly each time she plucked a piece of cat hair off Betty’s clothing, but right now the fresh coat of soft orange fuzz on her black leggings is a strange kind of comfort. 

 

All she wants to do is breathe and lay here on the cool faux-wood floor while letting the cat-fueled endorphins bring her body back to a normal setting. Much to her chagrin, there’s laundry to do and lesson plans to write and lunches to prep—except she doesn’t have groceries because she’s been gone all weekend, so she needs to make a list and then get  _ back  _ in her car, and she really doesn’t want to go to the grocery store on a Sunday evening because everything is picked over and—

 

“Betty?” 

 

Oh good, she thinks. Let’s make this even more interesting by bringing the source of the day’s original meltdown into the mix. 

 

Jughead is cautiously poking his head through the front door Betty apparently never closed. “You okay in there? I saw the door open when I let Hot Dog out, I swear I’m not trying to jump you the second you get home.” He seems to notice the unintended implication the moment Betty does because his face goes red after she bites her lip to keep from laughing. “Cool, so if you need me, I’m going to go walk straight into the Harbor and not come back.” 

 

He steps back and makes to close the door when she stops him, leaning awkwardly from her cross-legged position with a lapful of cat to call out. “Jug! Jughead, it’s fine come on in. I make no promises about my conversation abilities after all that traffic, and I don’t plan to get up from the floor any time soon, but please come keep me company.” 

 

And he does. Jughead turns on his heel, comes all the way through the door, and immediately joins her on the floor. Betty feels like she should be surprised, but after a few weeks of this burgeoning friendship, she’s not. 

 

“Any particular reason we’re criss-cross-applesauce-ing it right now?” He gives her a rueful smile before leaning over to join her in scratching Caramel’s ears. The purrs become exponentially louder and she can’t help but laugh. 

 

“She’s got you wrapped around her paw now, too. And give me a break, I’ve been with two kids all weekend. Criss-cross applesauce is the name of the of game.” 

 

“Any battle wounds? Kid-related or otherwise?” 

 

“I think I’m in the clear.” Betty takes a deeper breath to force the next words off the tip of her tongue before she can chicken out. “And I think it’s mainly because of you, Jug.” 

 

His ears go pink as he catches her eye in surprise. Betty is struck with the urge to kiss that look right off his face. 

 

She doesn’t, but she thinks next time she will. 

.

.

.

_ tbc _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure: the cat-in-the-cabinet-hole plot point is ripped directly from my own life. (I mean... as are many things. we all know I love to project onto Betty.)
> 
> as always, please let me know what you think! I'll do my best to make the wait between chapters a little shorter this time, and nothing inspires faster writing like ao3 emails :)


	4. Chapter 4

They fall into a pattern with such nonchalance, such little fanfare, that it barely makes sense for two highly anxious people. A couple nights per week, Jughead will show up on her doorstep with Hot Dog and pizza, or Betty shows up on his with baked goods and wine, and they relish in keeping each other company with no pretense of forcing cheerfulness or conversation unless they feel like it.

 

Sometimes they’ll mock terrible television together, other days Jughead will type away on his computer while Betty grades papers, and occasionally they have a night like the first night at Betty’s where they commiserate over their shared neuroses.

 

(“You’re so antisocial, Jug,” Betty teases him over takeout one night when he casually mentions that he skipped an after-work outing with some of his colleagues-slash-friends.

 

“You wound me. Maybe being in public is one of my anxiety triggers, you don’t know me,” he snarks back.

 

“I _do_ know you and I know that’s a blatant lie. You just hate people.”

 

“I hang out with you, don’t I?”

 

She concedes the point with a blush and a large bite of an eggroll.)

 

Veronica is the first one to point out to Betty that what they’re doing doesn’t qualify as dating, especially if they haven’t gone out on a date, let alone gone anywhere together that isn’t the other’s living room.

 

“I say this lovingly, Betty,” Veronica sighs over the phone. “But if you want this to be anything more than just two neighbors who are weirdly friendly, you’ve _got_ to get off the couch. It doesn’t need to be a fancy date, but you need to make sure this can exist outside the four walls of your house.”

 

What was the point of that, though, thinks Betty. Neither of them are exceptionally social people, and they’re already spending the majority of their free time together. If it were to become a relationship, it would mainly be existing within those four walls.

 

She voices this annoyance to Dr. Torres after a few weeks of this new routine with Jughead and two pointed comments from Veronica.

 

“Your friend may have a point about that,” Dr. Torres says, writing something down in Betty’s file before looking up at her thoughtfully. ”Maybe neither of you like to go out, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong at all with being a homebody, especially in your situation where you have a socially taxing job _and_ heavy anxiety. But let me ask you this: have there been any times since meeting Jughead that you’ve wanted to go out and do something, but decided against it in favor of spending time with him? I want to make sure that this friendship, and maybe eventual relationship, isn’t going to undo any of the work you and I have been doing in here.”

 

Betty thinks hard. Maybe _once_ she skipped a pilates class to watch a movie at Jughead’s, because he texted her about finally finding his lost box of DVDs right as she was deciding if it was worth it to put on a sports bra.

 

“I don’t think so,” she answers. “I guess… I guess my worry, more than undoing all this work, is whether I’m just pushing myself to make this happen so I’m not alone all the time. Is that terrible?”

 

“Terrible in what way, Betty? In that it would be terrible to put yourself into a friendship or relationship for the sake of it, or terrible in that you’d feel like you’re deceiving him?”

 

Betty _hates_ when Dr. Torres flips a question on her. They’re always the questions she has the most difficulty articulating the thought behind, which she supposes is precisely why her therapist does it to begin with. She chews on her lip in thought. “A little of both, I guess. But mostly that it wouldn’t be fair to deceive Jughead like that.”

 

She swears she sees the tiniest hint of a smile break through Dr. Torres’s impartial exterior. “Betty, if you’re more worried about what that subconscious decision would be doing to him than to you, then I think that settles your question.”

.

.

.

 _Let’s go out tonight,_ Betty texts Jughead from the parking lot of Dr. Torres’s office building.

 

His response is nearly immediate: _Let’s go out tonight as in you want to watch RENT, or let’s go out as in actually going out?_

 

_As in actually going out._

 

And then, because Betty is Betty and because she’s not letting herself back down, she clarifies: _On a date._

 

The little typing dots have never before been so excruciating.

 

_My best friend is never going to let me live it down that you beat me to the punch on this. But yeah, Betts, let’s go on a date tonight._

 

Betty sings along to the radio with a little more enthusiasm than usual as she drives home.

.

.

.

Jughead is out walking Hot Dog when Betty gets back and she feels herself go pink before even getting a chance to collect herself.

 

“Hey now,” he says after turning back up the block to greet her. “The date-inviter doesn’t get to be embarrassed. That’s my job as the date-invitee.” True to his word, Jughead’s free hand rubs nervously at the back of his neck.

 

Betty busies her own hands by crouching down to give Hot Dog a good face rub.

 

“I guess that means I’m also the one who’s supposed to come up with the date plan.” She says this more to herself than to Jughead but he answers her anyway.

 

“Don’t worry about it, I have an idea. I’ll swing by in—” he checks his watch “—two hours?” Betty nods, keeping her eyes fixed on Hot Dog as she stands because she’s afraid that if she meets Jughead’s eye she’ll either panic and run, or panic and kiss him. He beats her to it, swooping in quickly to press a kiss on her cheek and backing away in a flash. “There,” he says. “Now you’re allowed to be embarrassed.”

 

She’s struck dumb and stares after him from where she’s rooted in the driveway. Unless she’s mistaken, there’s a little more energy in his step as he retreats through his own front door.

.

.

.

Two hours is _just_ enough time for Betty to cycle through being giddy over finally tipping this _thing_ with Jughead into a more definable entity, excitedly text Veronica and Polly to boast about biting the bullet, and then descend into a horrified panic to stare at herself in the bathroom mirror.

 

What is she supposed to _wear?_

 

She spends about four minutes debating if she should call, text, or march next door to demand some semblance of detail from Jughead before her phone goes off of its own volition.

 

 _I can practically hear you thinking from over here,_ Jughead’s message reads. _Don’t give yourself an aneurysm. If you want to stay in your work clothes, that’s cool. If you want to show up in pajamas, also cool. We’re going to a place with equal opportunity apparel approval._

 

Satisfied, Betty decides to trade her pencil skirt for skinny jeans but keep the blouse on and is hopping slightly to tug the denim up her thighs when her phone dings again.

 

_I just want to clarify that by pajamas, I literally meant sweats or like what you wear when we’re half asleep on our respective couches. Not like ...fancy pajamas._

 

Betty giggles when she sees that he’s still typing, even after that comes in. He’s unbearably adorable when he thinks he’s put his foot in his mouth and tries to course-correct.

 

 _Not that it’s a bad thing if you own and/or want to wear fancy pajamas.  
_ _I’m going to shut up now._

 

She’s grinning ear to ear when she taps out the following messages in quick succession:

 

 _Now I can hear YOU_ _thinking from all the way over here.  
__Play your cards right and maybe you’ll find out if I own fancier pajamas than my ancient cheer team sweats._  

 

It makes her feel good to tease him like that, to dance along this thin line they’ve both been carefully skirting for the past couple of months. The desire that had been growing is simply too much to ignore anymore and Betty likes how safe and happy she feels with Jughead. And with Dr. Torres’s subtle approval in her back pocket, Betty feels invincible with the acknowledgement that this quasi-relationship transcends her self-preservation and anxiety.

 

The fact that something new and unpredictable makes her bubble with excitement instead of hyperventilate and want to crawl into a hole only serves as a nice bonus.

 

(Because if, in the next 75 minutes, if Betty _does_ start to hyperventilate and tells Jughead she can’t go out, he will understand. He’ll understand so much that he’ll probably be at her doorstep in moments just to give her a hug and make her tea.)  

 

As Betty is leaning in close to her bathroom mirror to put on a fresh coat of eyeliner, she receives texts back from Veronica and Polly. Polly’s, as expected, is full of encouragement and several heart and confetti emojis; Veronica is perhaps even more predictable: containing nothing more than a string of innuendo-laden emojis.

 

Rather than dignify that one with an answer, Betty finishes her makeup retouch with a quick flick of her wrist to give the liner a slight cat-eye. It’s not something she’s done in ages, since the days where she went to bars with Veronica and was more easily convinced to let loose, or at the very least—let _loose-ish._

 

“What do you think, nugget, huh?” she coos to Caramel, who’s leapt up onto the bathroom counter next to her. “Do I look like you now? Is this going to make your soulmate’s dad want to kiss me?”

 

The next text she receives more than confirms that truth, with or without the eyeliner.

 

_Stop making me think unholy thoughts, Cooper._

_._

_._

_._

Jughead knocks on her door at eight on the dot.

 

She’s unlocked it for him, as is their norm, and yells as much while she’s digging through the pantry for a new bag of cat treats. The knock comes again.

 

Confused, Betty moves to the front hall and is ready to ask Jughead why he didn’t come in right as the door opens from the outside to reveal him, looking sheepish and holding pink daisies wrapped in paper.

 

“I thought I’d do the proper date thing and not barge through your front door and then I realized that might confuse you so I started to barge in anyway.”

 

Betty grins, enjoying the way his nervous blush crawls high on his cheeks. They’ve been doing this awkward dance for weeks now and it still delights her to know she makes him just as nervous as he makes her.

 

True to form, his hand flies to its usual place at the back of his neck to fidget where the hem of his hat meets his skin. It’s then that Betty realizes he’s taken the hat off. His hair looks unruly, as though he’s run his fingers through it several times when his hand met hair instead of hat. He looks rumpled in an adorable way and a good deal more than adorable when Betty takes in the rest of his appearance.

 

Though still in plaid, the shirt he’s wearing looks to be starched than his regular flannels in the way it fits snugly on his shoulders and forearms where the sleeves are rolled up. In their time together, Betty’s seen Jughead in a variety of clothing—and thoroughly appreciated them all, especially the sleeveless undershirts—but she has to admit he cleans up _very nicely._

 

Betty is suddenly aware that she’s checking him out in the most thorough and blatant way since the start of their friendship and feels her face warm. To spare them both more blushing and awkwardness, she steels her nerves and pulls his free hand down from his neck to lace her fingers through his and tug him toward the kitchen.

 

“Come on,” she says. “Let me get these in some water.”

 

Jughead is babbling again. “I know you already have potted daisies so this seems redundant, but I was at the store looking up whether each kind of flower I wanted to get was safe for cats, and apparently, like, every flower on the planet could kill Caramel. And I figured you’d obviously done your homework so whatever you had was safe. Hence, daisies.”

 

“Jug.”

 

He looks up at her. “Yeah?”

 

“They’re beautiful. So shut up and stop second-guessing yourself.”

 

He watches her carefully, a glint in his eyes before they narrow. “Did you just use your teacher voice on me?”

 

(She had. It’s effective in almost any situation, Betty’s found. She’d yet to use it in a date-slash-romantic setting, though, and is happy it didn’t backfire. In fact, Jughead had looked both surprised and delighted by it. She files that tidbit away for future use.)

 

“Maybe,” she sing-songs back.

 

Jughead mutters something that sounds distinctly like _why was that so hot,_ but Betty busies herself with pulling a vase down from a high shelf instead of answering. She’s on her tiptoes, fingertips just brushing the glass, when Jughead’s hand falls warm and heavy against her waist and he reaches past her with the other hand to grab the vase and hand it to her.

 

She knows, without a doubt, that her face is aflame with some mixture of embarrassment and desire. His hand may as well be on her bare skin for as much at it makes her burn up and something in the back of Betty’s mind flickers, tempting her to just place it on her skin herself and forgo this entire date pretense.

 

Very slowly, Betty turns in the space where Jughead has framed her against the kitchen counter. His own cheeks are a little pink, but his hands stay put—one now against the counter and the other still pressed against the fabric of her shirt. His lips are only a short, easily-closed distance from her and he is looking at her with what she thinks is an unfairly intense stare.

 

“We, uh,” Betty mumbles. “We are never going to make it to this date if you keep touching me like that.”

 

It’s the first time they’ve brought up the eventual physicality of their relationship, text messages notwithstanding. Jughead’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Does that mean I should or shouldn’t move my hand?”

 

Every part of Betty is screaming at her to tell Jughead not to move his hand, except to possibly move it much, much lower. Even her brain is on its way to agreeing when a plaintive, loud meow startles them apart. Betty exhales heavily.

 

At their feet, Caramel looks up expectantly in an effort to remind Betty that she’d been about to open the bag of treats that now sits, unopened, on the counter. On the same brain wave, Jughead moves to give Caramel the treats, motioning for Betty to finish what she was doing with the flowers. The action gives her the time and space to let her body cool down and her brain return from the confusing place where she’d been about to jump on the counter so they could have their way with each other.

 

(It’s still an appealing thought. But Betty does want to get that date under their proverbial belt. If only so they can call it a day and then move onto the removal of actual belts.)

 

( _God,_ is it appealing.)

 

Betty arranges the bouquet after trimming the stems and thinks it might look nice up on her dresser. She’ll move it there later, she decides, turning to find Jughead bending to the floor to scratch Caramel’s chin.

 

“Are you done spoiling my cat with too many treats?”

 

Jughead looks up and winks at her. “Never.” When he returns to standing, he’s only a few inches away from her again, which she knows is on purpose this time.

 

 _Fuck it,_ she wants to say. _Fuck both of our nervousness and anxieties and everything._

 

Betty doesn’t say it. But she does lean forward and kiss him.

 

She knows she’s caught him off guard in how he freezes for just a fraction of a second before his hands come to rest at the space between her jeans and her top, gripping tightly and dragging her closer so he can respond in kind.

 

The kiss isn’t the filthy, _let’s rip off each other’s clothes_ kind of kiss Betty really wants to have, but it certainly isn’t chaste. She can taste the mint of his toothpaste in her mouth and feel his chapped lips against hers as they each pour weeks upon weeks of second guessing and overthinking and _is this real or am I imagining it_ into the simple action. It’s not soul-baring and there are no fireworks, but Betty is glad for the lack of overwrought metaphorical feelings in their kiss.

 

It feels good, and like they should have done this weeks ago; that’s more than enough.

 

Jughead is the one to separate from her, pulling back enough to meet her eye. “What was that for?”

 

“I wanted to,” Betty answers. “And now we can go on this mysterious date without either of us distracted by being nervous about a first kiss.” She chews on her lip while she watches the lazy grin break across his break and can tell that her lipstick is beyond smudged.

 

“You’re a smart woman, Betty Cooper,” Jughead says, using his thumb to clear away some of the pink that’s on both their mouths.

 

She grins. “That’s what they tell me. So now _you_ tell _me,_ where are we going for this date?”  

 

“We, Ms. Impatient, are going to Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe.”

.

.

.

As is turns out, Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe is an unassuming roadside diner off I-90, about an hour outside of Boston Proper but still a reasonable drive from Betty and Jughead’s neighborhood. For both the duration of their drive and their meal, they act like they always do—comfortable with any silence, but quick to verbally spar.

 

It’s like any other night for them, which relieves a weight off Betty’s chest she didn’t even know was there. This _can_ work; it _does work,_ she tells herself. Nothing has changed, other than the admittance of their mutual attraction and desire to build some _fun_ in their regular patterns.

 

(“Betty, Pop’s onion rings are _to die for,_ you can’t not order them.”

 

She fixes him with a look. “Onion breath, you moron.”

 

“Hey, Pop!” Jughead turns over his shoulder to call across the the bar. “Make that double fries, no rings please!”)

 

Over a burger, grilled cheese, a double order of fries, and two large shakes (one vanilla, one chocolate), Betty comes to the realization that all of her post-date meltdowns weren’t about dating or being in a relationship at all. They were simply because she hadn’t been on a date with the right person.

 

It dawns on her slowly and then warms her in a rush: Jughead _is_ the right person. She trusted her gut when it came to befriending him, didn’t overthink it all that much, and accidentally waltzed directly into a very happy near-relationship.

 

It is quite frankly, Betty thinks later as she crosses the truck’s bench to climb into Jughead’s lap and kiss the last traces of milkshake away from his mouth, a travesty they didn’t get over themselves sooner than this. They spend more time lazily making out in the truck while parked in Jughead’s driveway than is strictly appropriate for two grown adults, especially two adults whose homes, couches, and beds are within a stone’s throw.

 

The indulgence in such an immature, desire-based action feels liberating.

 

One of Jughead’s hands cups her face, fingers scratching lightly at where her ponytail has loosened, and the other braces against her hip to hold her steady. It feels good, finally kissing him at length, finally giving into this.

 

But Betty knows it can only get better.

 

“Jug,” she manages between kisses. “We—” his lips move to her jaw, “—we should—” to the hollow of her ear, “—go to one of our beds.” She gasps into the increasingly warm air of the truck cab when Jughead pulls the neck of her blouse aside to suck harshly at her collarbone.

 

When he separates his mouth from her skin, even though both hands are still burning against her, Betty wants to whine. It’s taken them this long to get here and she _doesn’t want to stop._

 

“Are you sure?” Anyone who didn’t know Jughead well enough would miss the imperceptible nervous lilt of his question. Betty doesn’t miss it and takes the opportunity to look him square in the eye.

 

“Jughead.” She uses one thumb to once again remove a smear of her lipstick from his mouth, leaving her hand soft against his cheek afterward. “I have overthought a lot of things in my life. I am done overthinking _us_. I want this. Do you?”

 

As though shocked by the question, Jughead’s eyes widen. “ _God,_ Betts, of course I do.”

 

Betty pulls him to her to press a hard kiss against his mouth, nipping slightly at his bottom lip as she finishes. “Good. Then no more thinking.”

 

He pops the driver's side door open and uses both hands to hoist her legs around his hips while they clamber out. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

 

* * *

 

 Jughead doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of waking up next to Betty.

 

He has, oddly enough for someone of his demeanor, spent more of his life sharing a bed with another warm body than not. When they were both pint-sized, he and Jellybean split the sofa bed and he had only just been relegated to an air mattress on the cracked linoleum when Gladys disappeared into the night with only one of her children; later in life, Jughead often fell asleep on the shitty full-sized mattress only to wake up to the majority of the bed taken up by his drunk and unshaven father.

 

Jughead had been away at school, relishing in the comfort of a bargain bin single mattress for just over a year when he’d brought Hot Dog into his life. His bed was barely large enough for him, let alone him _and_ the massive sheepdog, but Jughead didn’t have the heart to kick him off that first night. Not when he, too, had once been the one left behind who’d never known a bed of his own.

 

Over the years, they’d graduated to a queen— _with box springs—_ and though they spread out, Jughead always appreciated the gentle reassurance of another living being sharing his bed. Even if that living being has horrendous breath and sheds everywhere.

 

Sharing with Betty, though, is on a whole other plane. Jughead wakes up to an armful of blonde burrowed into his chest and routinely thinks he may combust from happiness.

 

True to their own neuroses, it took several weeks of skirting around the inevitable before Jughead’s laziness finally won out over his anxiety and he announced he was simply too comfortable wrapped in Betty’s blankets to go home, so he _had_ to spend the night. They haven’t spent a night apart since.

 

They switch between houses every so often, but Betty prefers to sleep with Caramel curled up at her shoulder so they eventually make a trip to the pet store to get a dog bed for Betty’s bedroom. Not long after that, Caramel abandons her spot by Betty’s pillow for the space at the crook of Hot Dog’s neck where he curls up on the overstuffed sherpa and corduroy monstrosity. Jughead starts to tease Betty for the pouting that results, but once he notices it’s more in sincerity than in jest he instead reminds her that no pets in bed leaves more room for _activities._

 

After that, they thoroughly enjoy the extra space.

 

Twice.

.

.

.

Slowly but surely they learn to leave their cocoon, hand in hand.

 

Over the course of a few months, Hot Dog’s walks around the block turn into the trio driving downtown to meander through Boston Common; they finally order the onion rings at Pop’s and make a weekly trip out for shakes; Betty isn’t quite ready to bring Jughead into one of her therapy sessions, but she does shyly ask if he’d drop her off and come in to meet Dr. Torres; through some act of god, Sweet Pea convinces him to join a weekly trivia night on Wednesdays with Toni and some of the other copyeditors.

 

He doesn’t actually _show up_ every week, but when he does, usually at Betty’s urging, he enjoys himself. Mostly because his and Toni’s combined knowledge means they mop the floor with the other teams, but still.

 

When he says, “I can’t take credit for that one, I only knew it because Betts mentioned it in passing,” in response to questioning stares after answering the scientific name for a gerber daisy— _gerbera jamesonii—_ Sweet Pea grins.

 

“You should bring her around next week, Jones. If you haven’t already scared her off, I doubt we will.” The tone itself is teasing, but Jughead can read the undercurrent of sincerity in Sweet Pea’s words. After ages, they’ve finally bridged the gap between friendly coworkers to actual friends and it only makes sense for the three of the four people in Jughead’s life he actually _likes_ should meet. And, if Jughead is being fair, he owes credit to Sweet Pea for helping him get his head out of his ass when he was still too nervous to do anything about his then-potential feelings for Betty.

 

“I mean, screw just bringing her,” Toni butts in. “If she’s that good at trivia, she’s got your spot hands down.”

 

“I missed _one question,_ Toni. One! And was about sports!” He’s answered with a middle finger so Jughead chucks a cold fry at her. “You didn’t know the answer either, asshole.” When they all settle down—Sweet Pea discretely moving his full pint away from Toni’s reach on the off chance that throwing food escalated—Jughead tries to answer as best he can.

 

It’s manageable to cancel set plans when the plans involves both halves of a couple that are deeply uncomfortable in social settings; adding in a couple of social butterflies that one person hasn’t met yet is a whole other ball game. “I’ll definitely mention it to her,” he tells Sweet Pea. “She can be pretty wrecked after a day of dealing with obnoxious twerps, so it may have to be a game time decision.”

 

Sweet Pea nods and clinks his beer against Jughead’s. “Great, can’t wait to meet her.”

.

.

.

At the end the night, after winning the prize of a free tab, Jughead heads home to change, pick up Hot Dog, and walk over to Betty’s. Their rhythm, though unconventional, is the perfect balance for them. For as much time as they spend in each other’s homes—mainly Betty’s, though they do switch it up and walk the few hundred feet over to Jughead’s—it would make sense for Jughead to cut his lease early and make his move official. Despite the “flawless” logic Archie continuously tries to convince him of, Jughead knows it is equally important to both him and Betty to keep their separate spaces.

 

Always hyper-aware of his mental state, even if sometimes obtuse about how to handle it, Jughead likes knowing that if he gets panicky about the responsibility of a long-term relationship or considers the inevitability of something he cherishes falling apart, he can lay on the floor of his kitchen, listen to a Radiohead album, and snap himself out of his idiocy without upsetting Betty.

 

Similarly, Jughead’s learned to spot Betty’s tells and adapt accordingly—silence and clenching of fists means he should distract her with something happy or soothing; a firm set of her jaw and unfocused gaze means everything about the current situation is overwhelming and needs to stop as soon as possible—sometimes that means cutting a day out short and sometimes it means she needs him to leave her alone immediately. It stung the first time she said, through gritted teeth, “Jug, I need space,” but he appreciates that she knows herself well enough to do precisely what she needs to calm down.

 

He knows that she, too, likes the safety net of them keeping their separate and absurdly close residences, so they do.

 

(She’d admitted to him, in the smallest of voices while they were going to sleep one night, that it terrified her how strongly she felt for him. “Polly keeps giving me grief for us not moving in together when we spend literally every moment with each other and I just …I’m scared that if we don’t keep our spaces we’ll get codependent. That we’ll become what keeps us afloat instead of just being the occasional life raft while treading water.”

 

“I understand, Betts, I do,” he’d whispered back, kissing tears off her cheeks. He only wants to do this once, knows that this woman in his life and bed and heart is it for him. Whatever it takes to do this right, Jughead is ready and willing.

 

After she’d fallen asleep, the rise and fall of her chest steady against his own, Jughead whispers his own fear into the night.

 

“I think I’ll love you forever.”

 

They words feel strange on his tongue, but in a way that made him want to say it over and over again until Betty woke up and he can prove it to her in every way imaginable.)  

.

.

.

She’s video chatting with Veronica when Jughead lets himself in the front door. Hot Dog bounds ahead and he can hear the exact moment when he leaps onto the couch, punctuated by a yelp that means he must have put a paw directly on Betty’s stomach and then a loud, happy meow.

 

“Control your beast,” Veronica chastises through the screen when Jughead enters the room to kiss Betty hello. “He’s interrupting valuable girl time.”

 

He raises his hands in surrender. “It’s on me, I’m sorry. We finished the trivia ass-kicking early, I’ll come back when you’ve finished.”

 

Betty’s indignant pout is immediate. “No, it’s fine. Ronnie needs to learn how to share.”

 

There’s a huff from the phone but Veronica acquiesces and Jughead spends twenty minutes or so solving a crossword on his own phone and supplying answers where needed in the conversation.

 

Video chats—scheduled at Betty’s insistence, knowing her friend’s propensity to flake—are a common occurrence, so Jughead’s “met” Veronica a few times already. The morning after his and Betty’s first official date, Jughead woke up to Betty’s naked form cuddled up against him, Hot Dog at their feet, and a follow request from VCLodgeQueen on his barely-used Instagram account. Upon accepting it, he’d received a slew of vaguely threatening, though ultimately well-meaning, messages saying that if he caused Betty any distress, Veronica’s father had “very powerful friends who can make anybody disappear.”

 

He likes to think Veronica has warmed up to him somewhat, since she’ll actually engage him in the conversation when he happens to be in the room during a call—even if it’s just to tell him he needs a haircut, lest he become one of those pet-owners who starts to resemble their dog.

 

Stuck on twelve across, Jughead doesn’t even notice Betty’s done until she’s plucked his phone from his grasp and climbed into his lap. “Do I have to start stripping to compete with the New York Times Crossword now, Juggie?”

 

“You won’t hear me complaining.” He brings her lips down to his for a more thorough hello that leaves them both a little breathless and does, in fact, succeed in getting Betty to strip off her sweater. Jughead is toying with the hem of her camisole when Caramel nudges her way between them and yowls pointedly.

 

Jughead sighs and shifts the cat down to the floor. “We’re living in a zoo.”  

 

“We are,” giggles Betty. She rolls over to stretch her feet across his lap and reach down to play with Caramel’s tail. “But it’s a zoo with fresh brownies and a new true crime documentary on DVR.”

 

“Oh, talk dirty to me.”

 

Betty swats at him lazily while he gets up to retrieve the brownies. “By the way,” he calls from the kitchen, slicing a corner piece out of the pan. “You’re invited to trivia next week. Sweet Pea wants to meet you and I think there’s still a solid fifteen percent change he thinks I’m making you up.”  

 

He’s expecting a surprised _Oh!_ before a long pause, maybe a cautious _I’ll think about it;_ he is not expecting Betty’s enthusiastic, “Yeah that sounds great, Jug!”

 

“That sounds what?” His mouth of full of brownie and the question is mumbled, crumbs spilling indelicately from his lips and onto the counter.

 

Betty walks into the kitchen, with Caramel and Hot Dog at her heels, each looking for treats or attention. “I said that sounds like fun. Might be nice to witness all this so-called ass-kicking for myself.”

 

She says it so simply, so casually, that she might have just told Jughead she had queued up the next episode of Forensic Files for him before she goes to bed. The fact that Betty, without a moment’s hesitation, agreed to a social outing just for him feels monumental. And that she shrugs off such a monumental moment only serves to make him fall in love in with her more.

 

“You’re amazing,” Jughead tells her as he swallows his mouthful of brownie. Hands on her waist, he drags her into him to stamp a kiss on her lips.

 

Betty smiles at him with such affection he almost doesn’t know what to do with himself. “And you taste like chocolate.”

.

.

.

The day before trivia threatens to throw the entire plan into turmoil. Sweet Pea had asked him about it in the breakroom the morning after bringing it up in the bar and Jughead, per Betty’s insistence, tells him they’ll both be there.

 

“Wear your best nerd hats and read up on sports stats so Toni doesn’t kill you,” he smirked, before clapping Jughead on the back and saying in a quieter voice that he’s happy Betty wants to come out.

 

They keep the weekend lowkey, Jughead not-so-discretely trying to preempt any social exhaustion and Betty gamely letting him think he was being subtle as they take Hot Dog for a long park outing on what will likely be one of the last warm days before the Boston winter gloom sets in. On Tuesday, though, Jughead comes over after work to find Betty not on the couch, but huddled on top of her bed, making desperate swipes at the tears on her cheeks when he walks in.

 

In a flash, he’s on the bed and wrapping her in his arms. She’d changed into casual clothes and Jughead realizes as her rubs her shoulder that the worn fabric he feels is that of one of his many S-printed t-shirts, so old they’ve mostly been relegated to sleep shirts. He keeps a small stash of clothes in Betty’s dresser—rendered mostly useless by the fact that his own wardrobe is mere yards away—but he’d never seen her wear any of his clothes before now.

 

If it weren’t such a vulnerable moment for Betty, Jughead would grin like a goddamn fool.   

 

“What’s wrong, did something happen?”

 

“I don’t know.” Her answer, sounding like a sort of half-wail, isn’t all that convincing.

 

“Do you actually not know, or are you saying you don’t know because you don’t want to tell me what’s upsetting you?”

 

Betty’s hands flex where they’re holding onto his flannel and he hears her shuddery intake of breath. “Both,” she mumbles.

 

“Well,” Jughead wheedles. “Can we start with what the part you don’t want to tell me is?”

 

There’s a long moment of silence. And then, “I’m kind of scared to meet your friends.”

 

“Then we don’t go tomorrow. We bail on trivia and we have them come over to my place some other time, or we grab dinner with them at Pop’s. You don’t owe them anything, I am more than happy to skip trivia and you can meet them on whatever terms you want, whenever.”

 

He’s startled by her quiet and firm, “No.” When she lifts her head out of his embrace, Betty’s face is still streaked with tears, but they've stopped flowing. “No, we are going to trivia tomorrow. I want— I _need_ to prove to myself that I’m capable of doing at least one normal, adult thing without going full spiral mode. And I am making that one normal thing meeting my boyfriend’s coworkers.”

 

“Betty, no offense,” Jughead sighs. “But, fuck normal.”

 

Even with tear smudges, a messy ponytail, and an eyebrow quirked in a mixture of confusion and indignation, Betty looks beautiful.

 

“I’m serious. Fuck normal. It’s overrated and our brain chemistry doesn’t function normally anyway and that’s okay, so I don’t want you to think I’m expecting you to be anything other than exactly who you are. I’m in love with this exact version of Betty Cooper, not the Betty Cooper who fakes small talk to meet my friends just because they’ve roped me into a social gathering.”

 

She’s crying again, which wasn’t his aim, but there’s a rueful smile spreading across her face.

 

“Really, Jug? You love the snot-covered, shirt-stealing, mess of emotions version of me? You couldn’t have at least waited to tell me that until I didn’t look like a hot mess?”

 

Ah.

 

Yes.

 

Well.

 

He supposes that just slipped out.

 

But she hasn’t frozen in fear, or tried to gloss over his unplanned declaration of love, or fled the room, which Jughead thinks is a sign in his favor. So he leans into it.

 

“You, Betty Cooper, are the most beautiful hot mess I’ve ever had the pleasure of falling in love with.”

 

“You’re such a jackass, Jughead Jones,” she snorts with a halfhearted shove at the arm he still has braced around her. “But you’re the sweetest jackass that _I’ve_ ever had the pleasure of falling in love with.”

 

“Touché.”

 

Jughead grips tighter at her waist and tugs until they’re laid out flat across her bed, legs woven together while he thumbs at stray tears and follows the touch with his mouth. Betty gasps when he licks away one that made it down to her neck, so he peels his own tshirt off her and sets to work making her gasp even more.

 

They’re more in sync than ever as they move against each other, whispering _I love you’s_ into sweaty skin and moaning it even louder as they reach their peaks.

 

Afterward, Jughead plays with strands her hair in the glow of the day’s last lights. They’ve stayed wrapped up in each other for half the evening, but now he’s relishing in the comfortable silence of nothing but their breath and the two timbres of snores coming from Hot Dog’s bed. He thinks that if he missed out on all the expected affirmations of love growing up just so he could have this moment with her, it was all worth it.

 

He says as much out loud and Betty pinches him.

 

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

.

.

.

Jughead tells Betty no less than five times that they don’t have to go to trivia that night: once over their morning coffee, several times via text throughout the work day, and once more when he brings Hot Dog over after work.

 

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay going? We really do not have to.”

 

She’s digging for a sweater in the dresser and through the mirror above it, Betty fixes him with a look. “Yes, Jug, I’m sure.” She sounds exasperated but he still opens his mouth to protest, not wanting to push her social limits after how upset she’d been the day before, but she cuts him off. “If you ask me one more time, you’re sleeping alone tonight.”

 

He mimes zipping his lips.

 

Smiling satisfactorily, Betty crosses the bedroom and drags him down for a thoroughly distracting kiss.

 

“I love you and I want to meet your friends, anxious meltdown or no. Okay?”

 

He’s giddy hearing the words fall from her mouth, casual but still gilded with the newness of it all, and nods. “Got it.” She pulls away to switch out of her blouse, but Jughead holds onto her wrist. “And Betts? I love you too.”

.

.

.

They walk into the bar a few hours later, hands interlaced tightly.

 

Jughead pauses to pluck a couple strands of dog and cat hair off Betty’s coat before saying, “Guys, this is my girlfriend, Betty.”

.

.

.

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all she wrote! 
> 
> thank you so, so much to all the people who read, commented, and sent encouragement while I worked on this little universe. I'll miss it so, but it's been very fun. special thanks to stillscape and canariesrise. 
> 
> pretty, pretty please leave a comment if you have the time!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> pretty, pretty please leave a comment if you did!


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